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Exhibition partners
Friends of the Mauritshuis
The Johan Maurits Compagnie Foundation
M.A.O.C. Gravin van Bylandt Fund
Gilles Hondius Foundation
The exhibition has been supported by the Dutch government: an indemnity grant has been provided by the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands on behalf of the Minister of Education, Culture and Science.
Preface
MARTINE GOSSELINK
Introduction
ARIANE VAN SUCHTELEN
The Grand Tour — Travel and Culture in the Eighteenth Century
JANNEKE BUDDING
Holkham Hall and the Grand Tour
MARIA DE PEVERELLI
Building the Library as a ‘Perfect Virtuoso’
LAURA NUVOLONI
Following in the Footsteps of Thomas Coke’s Grand Tour
LUCY PURVIS
Burghley House — The Travelling Earls
JON CULVERHOUSE
John Russell, 4th Duke of Bedford, Francis Russell, Marquess of Tavistock, and the Grand Tour — Woburn Abbey and its Collection
MATTHEW HIRST
Collecting Italian Vedute: The Canaletto Series at Woburn Abbey
HOLKHAM HALL
POMPEO BATONI
Portrait of Thomas William Coke (1754-1842), 1774
Canvas, 248.8 x 170.3 cm
Signed and dated on the lower left corner: P. Batoni pinxit Romae an 1774, with a later inscription: THIS PORTRAIT PAINTED FOR/ THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY, WIFE/ OF PRINCE CHARLIE WAS/ PRESENTED BY HER TO
This portrait of Thomas William Coke, known as Coke of Norfolk, is considered one of the finest examples of Pompeo Batoni’s (1708-1787) late portraiture and shows the artist’s unabated zeal to impress his patrons.
Born in Lucca, Batoni spent his entire career in Rome and was undoubtedly the most celebrated painter of all the international visitors to Rome in the mid-eighteenth century. He perfected an irresistible formula for his portraits, and this painting is its perfect embodiment: technical virtuosity in the handling of costume combined with freshness and immediacy in the portrayal of the sitter. Furthermore, his prices were lower than those of British society painters such as Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) or Allan Ramsey (1713-1784).44
It is indeed a splendid depiction of a wealthy young Englishman on the Tour, posing for posterity among the symbols and sculptures of Rome. Like his great-uncle Thomas (see cat. no. 1) and his son Edward (see cat. no. 2), Thomas William went on the Grand Tour and between 1771 and 1774 travelled to Italy, visiting Turin, Florence, Rome and Naples. In 1773, while in Rome, he attended a masquerade ball organised by the Countess of Albany, wife of Charles Edward Stuart (1720-1788) – the last Stuart claimant to the British throne. Here, he most probably wore the white dress in which Batoni portrayed him in this painting. The young Thomas, whom contemporaries described as particularly handsome, is shown wearing a white ‘Van Dyck costume’, inspired by the portraits of the seventeenth century painter Anthony van Dyck (15991641). He paired this with an ermine-trimmed scarlet cloak,
MR/ T.W. COKE, AFTERWARDS/ VISCOUNT COKE AND EARL/ OF LEICESTER.
Lower left on the base of the column: THOMAS WILL. COKE.
Holkham Hall
a splendidly intricate lace collar, Stuart ‘rose’ shoe buckles and an ostrich feather-plumed hat in his hand. The imposing classical statue beside him is the recumbent Ariadne, now in the Vatican Museums. At the time it was one of the most popular Roman sculptures among the cultural elite and has been used by Batoni in several of his portraits.
The later inscription ‘This portrait painted for the countess of Albany […] was presented by her to Mr T.W. Coke […]’ supports the rumour that the Countess of Albany was infatuated with the young ‘bel anglais’ and commissioned the portrait as a gift to him. To add a further romantic aura to the painting, it has also been suggested that her features can be recognised in the sculpture of Ariadne.45
Thomas William was an important Whig politician and great agriculturalist, who pioneered modern farming methods and improved the breeds of cattle and sheep on his estates. He was created Earl of Leicester (of the second creation) in 1837, his great uncle’s peerage having been extinct on death. Though better known for his looks, his passion for agriculture, and his support of the American Revolution, Thomas William also made contributions to the collections at Holkham, including a magnificent Roman mosaic and several Renaissance paintings he acquired from the collection of this friend William Roscoe (1753-1831), a famous banker, lawyer and writer. All are still at Holkham.
MdP
Gaius Plinius Secundus, known as Pliny the Elder (23/24-79 CE)
Naturalis Historia, Italian translation by Cristoforo Landino (1424-1498)
Printed by Nicholas Jenson, Venice, 1476
Parchment, with frontispiece and 37 historiated book initials painted by hand in tempera and gold
Patron: probably Giovambattista Ridolfi (1448-1514) of Florence, his arms on the frontispiece
Illuminator: unknown
415 fols (unfoliated), parchment, folio 415 x 273 mm
Holkham BN 1985, Book II, frontispiece
Holkham Hall
The illuminated frontispiece to Pliny’s Book II shows a trompel’oeil image of the text as inscribed on a roll suspended to the entablature of a marble pavilion with four Corinthian columns. Its ledges are populated by putti playing heralds’ trumpets (buisines), holding crouched deer, or holding a half-eaten apple. The initial ‘E’ to the text is set in a vignette inhabited by a portrait of Pliny looking at an armillary sphere in his study, with his books and apples for sustainment.
BURGHLEY HOUSE
13-14
PAOLO VERONESE
Saint Peter, c.1585
Saint Paul, c.1585
Canvas on panel, 29 x 15 cm (each)
Inscription on the back: Palo [sic] Veronese pinxit
Burghley House
Brownlow Cecil, 9th Earl of Exeter (1725-1793), was known for the bookkeeperly precision with which he recorded expenses and other practical matters. We often find, for example, on the backs of paintings he acquired on his journeys to Italy, inscriptions in his hand that provide interesting background information about the acquisition. On the reverse of these small paintings by Paolo Veronese (1529-1588) he wrote: ‘St. Peter & St. Paul small life by P. Veronese from Mr. Hamilton at Rome a present’. The person referred to is Gavin Hamilton (1723-1798), a well-known Scottish painter and art dealer active in Rome, who was a focal point in Italy for English Grand Tourists in search of paintings and the Roman antiquities that were still being unearthed at numerous excavations in the eighteenth century. Hamilton acquired many of the paintings he traded in Rome from the Barberini collection, which was the source of these two works by Veronese. The heiress Cornelia Costanza Barberini-Colonna was forced to sell large numbers of paintings to pay off her gambling debts. The manner in which Brownlow acquired these two paintings – as ‘a present’ – shows how highly Hamilton valued him as a client.
The Verona-born Paolo Caliare, thus called Veronese, spent almost his entire career in Venice, where he became, together with Titian (c.1488/90-1576) and Tintoretto (15181594), a prominent standard-bearer of the colourful Venetian
School of painting of the late Renaissance. When Brownlow visited Venice in June 1769, during his second Tour of Italy, he succeeded in acquiring a number of costly paintings by this very sought-after master, which had belonged to the destitute church of San Jacopo on the island of Murano. The works in question are two organ shutters with life-size portrayals of Saint James and Saint John, and the central panel of an altarpiece with a representation of Salome, wife of Zebedee, beseeching Christ to favour her sons, John and James.102 The panel came to hang in the chapel of Burghley House –apparently there was no objection to its Catholic character. Hamilton must have done Brownlow a very great favour by giving him these costly paintings. Both apostles are portrayed barefoot and standing. Peter, the first bishop of Rome and therefore a key figure in the dissemination of Christianity, holds an opened book and is recognisable by his attribute, the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Paul, whose biblical writings were also important in spreading the Christian faith, is portrayed clutching a book under his left arm and using his right hand to support a sword, the means of his beheading and martyrdom. The small size of the canvases suggests that they were studies for large-scale likenesses of these two saints.
AvS
WOBURN ABBEY
JOSHUA REYNOLDS
Portrait of Francis Russell, Marquess of Tavistock (1739-1767), 1765-1766
Canvas, 123 x 98 cm
Woburn Abbey
Francis Russell, Marquess of Tavistock, son of the 4th Duke of Bedford, is shown here in a pensive pose, surrounded by attributes of a Grand Tourist. A bronze statue of Samson Slaying the Philistine after Michelangelo (1475-1564; see cat. no. 28), a souvenir from his travels, acts as a paperweight for the loose rolled papers and prints on the gilt-wood table. Leaning against the table is an oval painting, en grisaille, which is likely to be the ‘shield with a Battle Painted on it with a Brass rim’ recorded in the inventory of his effects taken in 1767.130
Writing to his friend Thomas Robinson (1738-1786), future 2nd Baron Grantham, in March 1762, Francis reports that so far in Rome he had ‘only bought some prints & a little basso relievo’.131 This is confirmed by the account books of his personal servant, George Rawson, which record consecutive payments to porters for the sculpture, and a bill for prints.132 In the painting, volumes and papers are casually stacked on a stool, one mezzotint slightly folded over the open-book by Francis’s bent knee.
Tavistock undertook an intense Tour of Italy, commencing in the winter of 1761 and returning to London in May 1762. He had a relatively short sojourn compared to many peers, but extensive nonetheless. Correspondence places him in Turin in December 1761, Florence in January 1762, Naples in February, and Rome in March; then in Bologna, Vicenza, Verona, San Michele, Brescia, and Milan during April and May, following the itinerary set by his friend Robinson. Despite writing in thanks
to him that he had ‘sure seen more in six months than many have done in 2 years’, he advised his cousin John Fitzpatrick, 2nd Earl of Upper Ossory (1745-1818), to experience Italy at a more leisurely pace, with at least three months in Rome and a month in Bologna.133
He recollected his travels with great fondness, and travelled vicariously through his cousin when he embarked on his own Tour: ‘I long to hasten to Italy (in idea only, I mean)’ and provided a detailed itinerary ‘for I shall observe the route I went in, speaking of the different places’, entreating John Fitzpatrick to return the letter as a useful personal reminder.134 Perhaps another sign of Francis’s wistful longing for Italy is evidenced in his acquisition in London of a painting by Richard Wilson (1714-1782) of Rome from the Villa Madama, in the same year he sat for this portrait.
Although displaying typical characteristics of a Grand Tour portrait painted in Italy, this portrait was in fact painted several years after he returned from his travels, by one of the leading British portraitists. Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) had travelled in Italy in 1749, a journey that was enabled by Francis’s future brother-in-law, Captain Augustus Keppel.135 He did not seek to monetise his trip by painting souvenir portraits, but his work was greatly influenced by his time in Italy and the sketchbook after Old Masters he compiled there.
VP
Cat. no. 31
This catalogue was published to accompany the exhibition
The Grand Tour – Destination Italy Mauritshuis, The Hague 18 September 2025 – 4 January 2026
authors
Janneke Budding
Jon Culverhouse (JC)
Matthew Hirst
Laura Nuvoloni
Maria de Peverelli (MdP)
Victoria Poulton (VP)
Lucy Purvis (LP)
Ariane van Suchtelen (AvS) editing
Ariane van Suchtelen
copy editing
Dorine Duyster, with the assistance of Daphne Martens and Robin de Vries translation
Diane Webb procurement of photos
Robin de Vries
design
Gert Jan Slagter production
Stichting Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijen Mauritshuis, The Hague
publisher
Waanders Publishers Zwolle colour management
Benno Slijkhuis, Wilco Art Books printing Wilco Art Books, Amersfoort
©2025 Waanders Uitgevers b.v., Zwolle / Stichting Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijen Mauritshuis, The Hague
All rights reserved. No part of the content of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording, or any other information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
The publisher has made an effort to acknowledge the copyrights of works illustrated in this book. Should any person, despite this, feel that an omission has been made, they are requested to inform the publishers of this fact.
ISBN 9789462626461 NUR 644
This catalogue has also been published in a Dutch edition
ISBN 9789462626454
www.mauritshuis.nl
www.waanders.nl
photo credits
The photographic material was provided by the owners mentioned in the captions, as well as by the following:
London, Royal Collection Trust: p. 116, fig. 5 (© Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2025 | Royal Collection Trust), British Museum: p. 18, figs. 1, 3, 4 (© The Trustees of the British Museum); New Haven, Paul Mellon Collection, p. 18, fig. 2 (© Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection); Norfolk, Holkham Hall: p. 26, fig. 1, p. 29, figs. 5, 6, p. 30, figs. 9, 11 (© photography Pete Huggings and with the kind permission of the Earl of Leicester and the Trustees of the Holkham Estate), cat. nos. 1-9, p. 26, figs. 2, 3, 4, p. 29, fig. 8, p. 30, fig. 10, p. 49, fig. 1, p. 56, figs. 2, 3 (© with the kind permission of the Earl of Leicester and the Trustees of the Holkham Estate), p. 14, fig. 11, p. 38, cat. nr. 4, p. 45, cat. nr. 6 (by kind permission of the Earl of Leicester and the Trustees of the Holkham Estate / Bridgeman Images), pp. 22-23 (© photography by Ivo Hoekstra); Stamford, Burghley House: pp. 58-58 (© photography by Ivo Hoekstra)
Front cover
Canaletto, The Entrance to the Grand Canal in Venice (30)
Back cover Angelica Kauffman, Portrait of Brownlow Cecil, 9th Earl of Exeter (1725-1793) (10) Page 2
Anonymous, The Head of the Goddess Roma mounted on a post-antique Bust (7) Page 8
Canaletto, The Entrance to the Grand Canal in Venice (30)
