English Dilettanti & Naples.
Today, the word “dilettante” is mainly pejorative suggesting a wasteful idler who dabbles in a field of expertise rather than being an authority on it. Back in the eighteenth-century the word had a more positive cast since it was linked with notions of virtue and taste. The origins of dilettante are found in 1734 when the word first entered the English language with the formation of the societies called after it.[1] Something of the character of these antiquarian societies can be gleaned from 18th century group portraits by leading Grand Tour artists such as Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-93) and Pompeo Batoni (1708-1787). One (above) includes the Welsh collector Sir Watkin Williams Wynn who clothed in a toga stands to the left and indicates a Greek vase on the table from the collection of Sir William Hamilton, who in turn gestures to his catalogue of that collection. Reynolds had taken his cue from an earlier group portrait of dilettanti by Batoni featuring Sir Watkin with his companions Baronet Thomas Appleby and Captain Edward Hamilton. In Batoni’s grander portrait, Sir Watkin, resplendent in a fur coat, holds up a drawing of Raphael’s Justice in the Vatican. To the right the standing Captain Hamilton holds a flute and gestures towards the seated Appleby who has a book open in front of him, the volume labelled “Dante.” Thus, the trio suggest “their devotion to the sister arts of painting, poetry and music.”[2] Whereas the Batoni group portrait “is defined by its Romanitas,” Sir Watkin also visited Naples where he became solid friends with Sir William Hamilton and acquired the first two volumes of Pierre Francois Hughes d’ Harcanville’s Recueil d’antiquités étrusques, grecques et romaine.
[1] Bruce Redford “Grecian Taste and Neapolitan Spirit: Grand Tour Portraits of the Society of Dilettanti” in Rediscovering the Ancient World, 179-188, 179.
[2] Ibid, 181.
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