Abstract
Northern European tourists, mostly British, began traveling to Venice in large numbers during the 18th century as a stop on the Grand Tour. The Grand Tour, a tour through Europe’s main continental cities, was meant to complete the education of a gentleman through exposure to ancient culture, art and politics. Through a close, chronological analysis of travel guides and diaries spanning from the late 17th century to the early 19th century by British travelers who visited Venice, it becomes clear that what constituted a completed education changed. Earlier texts focus mainly on attractions in Venice that have associations with the classics. Throughout the eighteenth century, the focus of the Grand Tourists’ education became more on the modern and was increasingly on the subject of art and architecture. The places and works of art visited and seen do not change so much as the way in which the authors analyze them. The Grand Tour had sparked the commoditization of art, an interest in art history and rise of connoisseurship earlier in the century, and by the later half of the 18th century a heightened interest and familiarity with art and architecture is evident.Copyright for articles published in this journal is retained by the authors, with first publication rights granted to Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Journal under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (linked here). By virtue of their appearance in this open access journal, articles are available for wide dissemination at no cost to readers, with proper attribution (acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal), in educational and other non-commercial settings. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process.
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