«to give a lively idea of the Italian gusto»

Giovanni Santucci, «to give a lively idea of the Italian gusto». Collezionismo di disegni e stampe e gusto decorativo barocco nell’Inghilterra degli Ultimi Stuart

Under the reigns of James I and Charles I Inigo Jones introduced into England, for the first time correctly and systematically, the Classical Language of architecture and the decorative sophistication of the Italian interiors of his age. But the Civil War violently stopped this process of evolution and refinement of the English taste, so that at the Restoration of Charles II to the throne of his ancestors in 1660, England was regarded, both locally and internationally, as one of the most underdeveloped area in Europe in architecture and decoration design. In short, however, a generation of architects that, with few exceptions, had never visited Italy designed magnificent buildings of an extrahordinary coherent and refined Baroque quality previously unknown in England, so that at the beginning of the Georgian Era, no more than sixty years after the Restoration, England was a country disseminated of overly magnificent mansions and public monuments built and decorated according to an Italianate Baroque gusto.

This book is intended as a contribution to explain how this sudden change of taste was made possible. It explores particularly how the activity of collecting Italian prints and drawings of architecture and decoration by English architects, artists and craftsmen supported the Baroque revolution of Late Stuart England. Moreover it investigate how the continual study of Italian graphic materials impacted on the approach to design of the British architects and artists working in the reigns of William the III and Anne, contributing significantly to shape the peculiar nature of the architecture and of the decoration of the English Baroque.