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Chapter 9 - Luxurious Landscapes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2023

Pietro Piana
Affiliation:
Università degli Studi di Genova
Charles Watkins
Affiliation:
University of Nottingham
Rossano Balzaretti
Affiliation:
University of Nottingham
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Summary

Many of the thousands of travellers taking advantage of the peace of 1815 wished to escape rapidly industrialising Britain, whose polluted air caused and aggravated so many respiratory illnesses, to experience for months or years the warmth of the Mediterranean. The poet Catherine Maria Fanshawe’s description of her arrival at Genoa in January 1820 encapsulates the experience of many: delight in the first view of the Mediterranean after weeks of travel; disappointment in the quality of the hotel; and astonishment at the variety of subjects to be sketched:

We reached it by moonlight and never shall I forget my surprise in turning a sharp corner of the road after descending the Bocchetta and traversing the long Valley to find myself suddenly upon the very shore of the Mediterranean. Then another turn at the foot of that noble Pharos, rather of the rock on which it towers with such majesty again changed the scene and we swept along the Bay and entered the marble City, the City of Palaces!

On arrival they ‘were miserably lodged, or perched, on the 6th or 7th storey of a wretched Hotel’, but were delighted by ‘the incomparable prospect, which commanded the whole bay and from my windows I cd have dropt an orange into the Mediterranean’. Moreover, she was almost mesmerised by the variety of scenes: ‘Oh the Orange Trees! And Oh the beautiful grouping and endless variety of Tower and Dome and Arch and Spire and even at that late season of colouring from the grey Olive to the Pomegranate and the Orange. My green Sketch Book was full at Genoa!’

The Mediterranean climate was believed to be especially advantageous for consumptive patients and in the winter months many wealthy people suffering from this disease travelled with their families to take advantage of the relative warmth and clean air. Guidebooks throughout the nineteenth century emphasised the benefits of different places for invalids. In the second half of the century, and especially after the opening of the coastal railway in 1874, many British, French and German visitors became seasonal or permanent residents on the Riviera.

Type
Chapter
Information
Rediscovering Lost Landscapes
Topographical Art in North-west Italy, 1800-1920
, pp. 237 - 266
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2021

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