Traveling the Old Roads of Italy

Three single-gallery exhibitions at the Getty Center tell the story of a handful of British aristocrats whose passion for things Italian created a travel craze that became a rite of passage for young men smitten by the desire to cultivate a taste for life’s finer things--while having some fun. The tourist industry was born.

It all started around the time the United States won its independence. Ancient Roman artifacts were being excavated hand over fist in Italy, causing English noblemen and gentry to turn their attention to the Old World. Plus, the weather was better at the heart of antiquity, not to mention the cooking.

The best place to start your personal tour is at “Naples and Vesuvius on the Grand Tour,” in the Getty Research Institute Gallery. The smallest of the shows, it functions like a guidebook or illustrated map, an introduction to other travelers’ journeys and far-off lands. There are about 30 books, maps, travel albums and a foldout postcard peep show, nearly all of which were made in the 18th century, as well as a terra cotta vessel from 300 BC. Because the books can only be open to one spread each, nearly 30 facsimiles of other pages--most of them hand-colored etchings--are also displayed.

As a whole, the imagery focuses on the legendary volcano that destroyed the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in the first century. Scenes of lava belching high into the night sky and pouring down the mountain’s side were favored by artists and artisans who produced spectacular mementos. Lava-covered landscapes, which resemble the surface of the moon, also appear frequently, as do realistic pictures of cabinets in which strange rocks and curious fossil souvenirs are stacked on orderly shelves, each more captivating than the last.

In the 18th century, Naples was one of Europe’s great cities, with Italy’s largest opera house and breathtaking vistas of the bay and Mt. Vesuvius. From 1764 to 1800, Sir William Hamilton served as the British ambassador to the city, which Englishmen visited as a diversion from the ponderous splendors of Rome. An amateur scientist, Hamilton led expeditions to the rim of the active volcano, collected shells, stones, antique fragments and objects, and published many illustrated catalogs.

The four volumes that document his vase collection are the first color-plate books in the history of art. Published in 1776, each luxurious tome is on display here, open to pages that highlight the range of the books’ artistry, including a boldly printed frontispiece; an engraving of a nattily dressed troupe plundering a grave; and a meandering yet sensible paragraph extolling the virtues of skepticism when it comes to knowing the truth about history.

This gallery’s highlight is a wall-size map of Naples and the surrounding countryside by Nicolo Carletti and Giuseppe Aloja. Made of 35 engravings that form a grid, the bird’s-eye view identifies every building, alley, piazza, field and dock in the city and its environs, an astonishingly imaginative act before airplanes made such perspectives commonplace.

Go next to “Rome on the Grand Tour,” the centerpiece of the three Getty shows. Its 65 paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, carved gems, sketchbooks, letters, pocket-guides and plaster souvenirs flesh out the world called to mind by the two-dimensional images in “Naples and Vesuvius.” The wide variety of objects that the grand tourists picked up along the way emphasizes the time, energy and money they invested in their horse-and-carriage journeys, which usually involved an entourage (including a tutor) and often lasted for up to eight years.

Although the Eternal City boasts such mythical landmarks as the Colosseum, the Forum and St. Peter’s Basilica (all of which are featured in idealized and romanticized prints), the fireworks displays at the Castel Sant’ Angelo seem to have captured the imaginations of the young visitors.

Francesco Panini’s hand-colored etching of the scene, which approaches the subtlety of an oil painting, still makes an indelible impression. Another view, by Louis Jean Desprez (who applied watercolor and gouache to an etching by Francesco Piranesi) is even more dazzling in its depiction of the evening’s climax: 5,000 rockets fired into the sky from a giant spinning wheel.

Three portraits show the range of skill and seriousness that painters and clients brought to this commemorative art. Pompeo Batoni’s full-length oil on canvas has it down to a science: the 23-year-old John Chetwynd Talbot, who would grow up to be First Earl Talbot, looks debonair and sensitive, framed by an urn, statue, ruin and his loyal cocker spaniel.

Jean-Etienne Liotard’s pastel, “Portrait of John, Lord Mountstuart, Later Fourth Earl and First Marquess of Bute” is more formulaic, its swiftly painted setting a collage of objects that symbolize taste and refinement. Although more care was taken with the 19-year-old’s face and body, it still looks as if George Washington’s head has been stuck on Oscar Wilde’s body, or at least into an outfit he’d love to wear.

In contrast, Anton Raphael Mengs’ “Portrait of William Burton Conyngham” is done with such facility and devotion that it seems to capture the spirit of its sitter, a 21-year-old Irishman whose fresh-faced well-being is uncorrupted by any sense of entitlement.

Pier Leone Ghezzi’s “Caricature of Cavaliere Ricci and Monsieur de Gravelle” depicts a couple of misshapen noblemen dressed in their finest. The pen-and-ink drawing, like those still made at sightseeing destinations all over the world, suggests the love-hate relationship that often grows between locals and tourists.

Canaletto’s oil painting of the Colosseum seen through the Arch of Constantine looks fabulous from across the room. Up close, however, its rudimentary illusionism is glaringly evident, revealing that it was cranked out swiftly (if skillfully), an early version of a postcard.

In contrast, numerous landscapes drawn in chalk and painted in watercolor, including a stunning pair of city views by Giovanni Battista Lusieri, are so exquisite that it’s hard to imagine they’re souvenirs.

But when you think about how much effort it took for 18th century Englishmen to get to Rome, it makes sense that they’d want images whose creation required ample time, talent and training.

A vitrine filled with engraved gems and raised cameos juxtaposes works from antiquity and their modern counterparts. These easily transported mementos were all the rage in their day. Sometimes the new-and-improved versions became more desirable (and expensive) than the originals. At other times, unscrupulous sellers crafted fakes.

Here and elsewhere in the show you see that 18th century artists were copying 2,000-year-old Roman works, which were themselves copies of ancient Greek artifacts.

The third exhibition, “Drawing Italy in the Age of the Grand Tour,” is a more traditional theme show loosely based on the Italian countryside. Comprising 25 drawings, 10 prints and one oil painting, it has little to do with the specifics of a grand tour, but it provides the museum with an opportunity to show off its riches.

In the dimly lit gallery, Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s fantastic edifices have the presence of Hollywood sets for gothic nightmares. Francesco Zuccarelli’s chalk, ink and gouache drawing of shepherds resting beneath a tree is an idealized daydream.

The romance of the sea is palpable in Marco Ricci’s rare gouache-on-leather depiction of fishing boats in a storm. Jean-Honore Fragonard celebrates homey sentimentality, bringing consummate draftsmanship to mundane barnyard labors.

Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo is well represented, with a comic image of children’s theater, a rare architectural rendering and a pair of gorgeous religious scenes, the holy family fleeing to Egypt and Mary Magdalene anointing Christ’s feet.

The clarity of sharp observation suffuses Jean-Joseph-Xavier Bidauld’s gem of a painting, in which a stone bridge can be glimpsed on a tree-covered hillside. Drawn on site in England, Canaletto’s image of Warwick Castle reverses the direction in which grand tourists traveled.

Although tourism today is as common as any other middle-class pastime, it is still a historical anomaly when seen in the full sweep of history.

Before grand tours put people on the road, we left home only to find food, go on religious pilgrimages, open trade routes or fight wars. Which makes, the secular aspirations and social satisfactions of the grand tour all the more extraordinary.

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Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive, Brentwood, “Naples and Venice” through March 24; “Drawing Italy” through May 12; “Rome” through Aug. 11; Parking $5, reservations required; closed Mondays; (310) 440-7300.