PhD researcher in Art History Alessia Attanasio is studying the history of collecting Baroque Neapolitan art by English Grand Tourists from the 1680s to the 1820s, with a particular interest in country houses and museum studies. She has recently been involved in research for the upcoming exhibition Sensing Naples in Compton Verney Art Gallery, Warwick, where the Grand Tour and its connections with Neapolitan art and culture can be absorbed and explored. The exhibition, which offers a multi-sensory experience of eighteenth-century Naples, opened on 1st April 2023.
Considered one of the most ambitious country houses in south Warwickshire, around nine miles east of Stratford-upon-Avon, Compton Verney holds one of the largest collections of Neapolitan art in the UK.
For many reasons, it is not surprising that such a collection is housed in the midst of the English countryside, surrounded by over 120 acres of landscaped grounds.
While the origins of the Verney family are obscure and cannot be easily traced, the manor itself has been rebuilt and extended over the years, while remaining in the ownership of a single family for sixteen generations. One of the earliest records of the family dates back to the mid-fifteenth century, when they began acquiring land in the area of Compton Murdak and the surrounding villages. There are few records of the early manor, but in 1711 George Verney (1661–1728), 12th Baron Willoughby de Broke, inherited the estate and commissioned the first extensive reconstruction of the previous house and gardens in a Baroque style. However, it was not until John Peyton Verney (1738–1816) that the house assumed its current U-shaped form. In the 1760s, the Scottish architect Robert Adam (1728–1792) was commissioned to remodel the house in a modern Neoclassical style. Further improvements were made in 1768, when the landscape architect Capability Brown (1716–1783) was employed to redesign the estate in a more naturalistic style.
The manor continued to be held by the Verneys until 1921, when it was finally sold. After passing through other owners, the estate was requisitioned as an army research centre during the Second World War, after which it remained unoccupied. In 1993 it was purchased by Sir Peter Moores, heir to the Littlewoods fortune, who bought the manor as the ideal space to display his unique art collection. Through Compton Verney House Trust the house was transformed into an art gallery, which finally opened to the public in March 2004.
Why – one might ask – is a place so tied to local history now displaying art from southern Italy? Usually, artworks from the Kingdom of Naples which found their way to the UK were commissioned by English aristocrats who travelled to Naples in the eighteenth century during the Grand Tour. However, it was not until the twenty-first century that Naples found its way to Compton Verney.
This is where Sir Peter Moores (1932–2016) and his passion for Italian – and especially Neapolitan – art came into play. Initially, the majority of his collection consisted of lots purchased from auction houses between 1992 and 2008. Although some of the finest pieces were resold, the most significant artworks in his Neapolitan collection, including paintings by Luca Giordano (1634–1705) and Bernardo Cavallino (1616–1656), as well as exquisite stones and coral artworks, now reside permanently at Compton Verney. The original display has remained unchanged until today.
Starting from the 1st of April 2023, the Neapolitan collection will be redisplayed for the first time, revealing the charm that the city of Naples has had for “grand tourists” for centuries. Sensing Naples is designed by Dr. Amy Orrock, Compton Verney’s senior curator, and will enclose new insight and curiosities about each artwork that have emerged during my recent research on-site. This unique collaboration originates from both my specialisation in Neapolitan art and my PhD research on the history of collecting Neapolitan Baroque art in England during the Grand Tour (1680s–1820s).
The new exhibition will bring to life timeless scents, Baroque music and sounds, pictorial sights, and unique souvenirs from the capital one of Europe’s richest and most complex kingdoms. Sensing Naples focuses on Baroque Naples’ artistic golden era, from the 1600s to the 1800s, and for the first time in Warwickshire, will introduce modern visitors to the scent of orange blossom, the salty sea breeze, and the aroma of fresh fish, evoking the fragrance of wealthy aristocrats’ long-embroidered jackets and leather gloves, as well as the pungent sulphur of smouldering Vesuvius.
What may surprise modern travellers is that for centuries Naples was considered one of Italy’s most beautiful cities. Already before the cultural vogue of the Grand Tour began, and Herculaneum (1738) and Pompeii (1748) were discovered, many travellers came to visit the remains of antiquity in Pozzuoli, Baia, Cuma, and the volcanic phenomena of Campi Flegrei in the northern area of Naples, deep in the ancient and magical myth of the poet Virgil and his connection with the city.
As time passed, the centre of gravity of the Grand Tour moved southward. The mid-eighteenth century saw a newfound interest in the beauty of nature and the theorisation of the Sublime (the fear and danger associated with landscapes and natural phenomena) and picturesque (which emphasised the landscapes’ pleasures and visual delight). These new aesthetic concepts made Naples – with both its picturesque bay and smouldering volcano – an even more desirable destination. The arrival of Sir William Hamilton, insatiable art collector, patron, and vulcanologist, who from 1764 served as the British Envoy to Naples (then under Bourbon rule), further fuelled this trend.
What were the scents of Naples centuries ago? What were the aromas that Grand Tourists experienced and inhaled before the spectacle of erupting Vesuvius? What types of music entertained them on warm midsummer nights? What kinds of souvenirs filled their trunks on their travels home?
New labels and wall texts will highlight discoveries and insights about Compton Verney’s unique permanent collection, exploring the Grand Tour and its impact on British culture and art. More than fifty artworks have been reimagined and redisplayed following the theme of the senses, providing visitors with an accessible, immersive, and – for the first time in the UK – multi-sensory experience of eighteenth-century Naples.
The exhibition will also feature new two contemporary artworks, commissioned in collaboration with Unlimited, a platform that supports disabled artists. The artworks include a digital work created by DYSPLA, an award-winning arts studio led by neuro-divergent individuals, and a tactile sculpture, created by Aaron McPeake (b. Belfast, 1965), whose work centres around his personal experience of sight loss. Aaron’s sculpture includes a piece of Vesuvius rock that he collected in Naples with the art historian and curator Emanuele Leone Emblema (b. Napoli, 1982).
This display has been made possible through numerous international collaborations. The scents were created thanks to the sponsorship and collaboration of the International Flavours and Fragrances (IFF), where fascinating studies based on the fragrances evocated by some of the artworks on display have been conducted by Bernardo Fleming, Emily Braclik, and their team of researchers. The volcanic lava souvenirs, on loan from Warwickshire Museum, were investigated with the help of Dr. Carmela Petti, Technical Director of the Museum of Mineralogy at the University of Naples Federico II, and the enamelled pendants have been given new insights by Dr. Rebecca Quinn Teresi, independent post-doctoral scholar based in Dallas, TX. Compton Verney has also collaborated with University of Oxford and the Centre for the Art and Architectural History of Port Cities (a partnership between The Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History, the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Naples, Franklin University, Switzerland, and Amici di Capodimonte, Naples), who have supported internships and research placements in Italy.
Sensing Naples explores and reimagines the presence of Neapolitan art in England, a presence which has long been overlooked within the context of the Grand Tour and beyond. This exhibition bathes Naples in a new light and invites modern visitors on a timeless journey in which they can immerse themselves in the city’s history, colours, sounds, and fragrances.
Alessia Attanasio
PhD researcher in Art History,
University of Birmingham
Golovine 