Torino britannica. - The British School at Rome

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Christopher Storrs The British Diplomatic Presence in Turin, Diplomatic Culture and British Elite Identity 1688-1789 Britain’s emergence as a major European power following the “Glorious Revolution” was closely bound up with a new, much closer relationship with the Savoyard state, which was often an ally in Britain’s eighteenth century wars against France. Associated with this was a near permanent British diplomatic presence in Turin. This paper seeks to do three things. (1) It explores British representation in the Savoyard capital in the eighteenth century in order to understand just how far British diplomacy fitted into the prevailing European diplomatic culture. (2) But it also seeks to address just how far the diplomatic experience contributed to developing notions of Britishness, as libertarian and Protestant (in contrast with the Catholic, absolute Savoyard state) . (3) Finally, the paper looks at the way Britain’s diplomats mediated between visiting Britons, many of them passin through on the Grand Tour, and the Savoyard Court and associated institutions – above all the Turin academy – and in this way contributed to the spread among some sections of the British elites of European notions of nobility. Christopher Storrs graduated with Honours in Modern History from the University of Oxford (St. Catherine’s College), and obtained his PhD from the University of London (London School of Economics). His research interests centre on early modern Europe, and in particular on Spain and Italy (where he is especially interested in the Savoyard state). In terms of themes, he is particularly interested in international relations (war and diplomacy), state formation and empire, and the nobility - or nobilities - of Europe in the same period. His publications include War, Diplomacy and the Rise of Savoy 1690-1720 (Cambridge, 1999), The Resilience of the Spanish Monarchy 1665-1700 (Oxford, 2006) and (as editor) The Fiscal-Military State in Eighteenth Century Europe (Farnham, 2009). Dr. Storrs is Reader in History in the School of Humanities at the University of Dundee.
Karin Wolfe John Molesworth: British Envoy and Cultural Intermediary in Turin The name of John Molesworth (1679-1726), British envoy to the Savoyard state from 1720-1725, first appears in the art historiography in 1757. In the second volume of his Raccolta di lettere pittoriche, Giovanni Gaetano Bottari published three of Molesworth’s letters - written to Francesco Maria Gabburri over the course of five months in 1724 - which Bottari deemed to represent the fruit of the knowledge of “a man of letters and of a highly refined discernment” (“uomo di lettere e di finissimo discernimento”). The letters in question critique a pictorial commission awarded the Florentine painter Tommaso Redi and show the lofty erudition and highly developed aesthetic taste that Molesworth amply demonstrated during the course of his diplomatic sojourn in Turin, where he was described by a contemporary traveller as “the delight of this whole court” (“qui fait les délices de cette Cour”). This paper will analyse the role played by Molesworth at the Savoy court as an intermediary of the vital cultural exchange taking place between Britain and Florence, the city which had left an indelible cultural imprint on Molesworth during his earlier residency there as envoy extraordinary to the Medici principality from 1711-1714. This context was the setting for the long rapport of both friendship and patronage that developed between Molesworth and the Florentine architect Alessandro Galilei (1691-1737). The relationship took root in Florence, progressed to England and Ireland when the architect moved there for five years beginning in 1714 upon the envoy’s urging when he left Italy, and then continued through Molesworth’s later residency in Turin, as can be documented by the surviving correspondence, published, in part, by Ilaria Toesca in 1952. A re-evaluation of this correspondence, pieced together with other contemporary sources, allows for a complete portrait of Molesworth to emerge as a modern “Virtuoso”. Connoisseur of painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and poetry – both ancient and contemporary - Molesworth’s cultural acumen matured in Turin, while he was in contact with the artists, scholars, European travellers and personalities who frequented and comprised the Savoy court, including first and foremost the royal architect and taste-maker, Filippo Juvarra. Karin Wolfe (M.A. PhD Courtauld Institute) is a Research Fellow at the British School at Rome. She has taught at Temple University and John Cabot University and has published on Roman seventeenth- and eighteenth-century patronage, art and the Grand Tour; including articles on Caravaggio, Cardinal Antonio Barberini, Andrea Sacchi, Francesco Borromini, Francesco Trevisani and Filippo Juvarra. She is co-author (with Michael Jacobs) of the chapter of Italian drawings in Drawings for Architecture, Design and Ornament, the James A. Rothschild Bequest at Waddesdon Manor (2006), and co-editor of Roma Britannica: Art Patronage and Cultural Exchange in Eighteenth-Century Rome. (2011). She is presently writing a monograph on Francesco Trevisani.
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