andrea casali and james byres: the mutual perception of the roman and british art markets in the...

Andrea Casali and James Byres: The Mutual Perceptionof the Roman and British Art Markets in

the Eighteenth Centuryjecs_279 291..314

PAO L O C O E N

Abstract: This article analyses two art dealers active in the eighteenthcentury. Andrea Casali started out as a painter and later became also a dealer,and was active in both fields during his twenty-five-year stay in England. TheScotsman James Byres, having tried unsuccessfully to become a painter, spentmuch of his life in Rome, where he was known above all as a cicerone and asan art dealer, selling mainly antiquities and Old Master paintings. The twomen’s careers illustrate the complexity of artistic relations between the PapalState and Britain in the era of the Grand Tour.

Keywords: History of taste, art market, eighteenth-century painting, AndreaCasali, James Byres, transmission of culture, history of art criticism

It is widely acknowledged that the study of the art market embraces notmerely economics but also art history, aesthetics and culture in general. Thisexplains the increasingly interdisciplinary approach that has emerged overthe last few years, in both scholarly and more popular, journalistic writing,concentrating on extending our knowledge of a number of specific points andpromoting analysis of possible research methods.1 It is now clear that themarket is a viable and valuable point of access to an understanding ofdiscrepancies, points of contact and mutual influences among specificcultures, not least the links between eighteenth-century Italy and GreatBritain. Two key figures represent this process with singular clarity: AndreaCasali and James Byres.

The Roman painter Andrea Casali was already considered a highly talentedartist in his own lifetime.2 The protégé of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni,3 a refinedand influential collector, Casali soon began to emerge in the competitiveenvironment of the capital. In 1725 he won first prize in the drawingcompetition run by the Accademia di San Luca, which shortly afterwardselected him a member.4 Four years later, in 1729, Pope Benedict XIII awardedhim the Knight’s Cross for his frescos in the church of San Sisto Vecchio5 – anenormous social and professional honour, placing him alongside Bernini,Trevisani and, some years later, Vasi and Piranesi. It is not difficult to see why

Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies Vol. 34 No. 3 (2011)

© 2010 British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 GarsingtonRoad, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK, and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

Casali set such store by this award and mentioned it so frequently in lateryears as to occasion not a little irony in polite society.6 There was, then, a solidbasis for Casali’s being referred to in 1737, as ‘uno tra i primi giovani [pittori]che presentemente si trovano a Roma’.7

Casali also supplemented his income from painting by working as an artdealer. Rome was at that time a flourishing market, both domestic andinternational, at every price level,8 and a good many operators were non-professional dealers like Casali, dealing ‘on the side’. These included a range ofcraftsmen – gilders, framers and paint manufacturers, experts, collectors andart lovers, and also small- and large-scale entrepreneurs, from innkeepers andhoteliers to bankers, speculators, agents and intermediaries – all busy dealingin paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints and decorative arts objects. Thesituation was described as follows by the French traveller and writer JosephJerôme de Lalande: ‘A Rome tout le monde s’occupe de tableaux et prétend s’yconnoître; beaucoup de gens vivent de ce trafic, surtout avec les étrangers.’9

It was therefore perfectly normal for several artists to do the same,particularly given that they had the raw material at their fingertips, as it were,and could also save considerable amounts by carrying out any necessaryrestoration work themselves. One example among many is Carlo Maratti,10

the great master of late Baroque Classicism. Maratti ran a thriving trade inOld Masters, including pieces attributed to Raphael, Annibale Carracci, GuidoReni and Domenichino, such as the Triumphal Arch in the Prado (Fig. 1),which was purchased after his death by the king of Spain.11 Giuseppe Ghezzi,the secretary of the Accademia di San Luca and Maratti’s close friend,similarly worked with his son Pier Leone as a dealer, in their case selling OldMasters and Classical marbles.12

Casali too had originally specialised in Old Masters, both originals andcopies. He was particularly interested in artists of a classical bent, inaccordance with the taste established in the late seventeenth century, owingmainly to Giovanni Pietro Bellori and Carlo Maratti, and which becamecanonical in the eighteenth. The central figure was naturally Raphael; Casaliowned four copies of works from of the Vatican Stanze: the Expulsion ofEliodorus from the Temple, The Fire in the Borgo, The Meeting of Attila and Leo theGreat and The School of Athens. Equal attention was paid to the greatsixteenth-century Venetian painters,13 at that time mostly of classicistleanings – for example, Titian, Palma Vecchio and Veronese – and thusgenerally appreciated in Italy and abroad, or artists with a more relaxedbrushstroke, such as Giovanni Lanfranco, Lorenzo Pasinelli and SebastianoRicci. This did not prevent Casali from occasionally appreciating paintersconnected with Caravaggio and naturalism, as shown by a ‘finely paintedWoman’s Head’ by Jusepe de Ribera.

Casali’s second area of specialisation was the Northern School, such asMarten van Heemskerck, Anthony van Dyck, Rembrandt and Adrian vanOstade. These were all widely known and appreciated in Rome through workssuch as the purchases of the Pamphilj, the Corsini, the Marquess Capponi and

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© 2010 British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies

Cardinal Silvio Valenti Gonzaga,14 and through the catalogue of paintings inLudovico Mirri’s shop, which was published in the 1770s and comprised someninety items, divided into two equally important sections: one of ‘quadriitaliani’ and the other of ‘quadri oltramontani’, or paintings from northernEurope.15

Casali’s third area was sculpture. Some pieces were Classical marbles, suchas a head of Lucretia, a head of Jupiter or a statue of Galatea. Some otherswere modern, but all’antica – made in a classical style – such as the bas-reliefrepresenting the Three Graces, directly inspired by an original work excavatedat Herculaneum. A good portion of his business was based on small busts andheads in bronze from the Renaissance to the Baroque, by artists such asAndrea Riccio ‘l’Antico’, Alessandro Algardi and the Italianised Flemishartist François Duquesnoy. When it came to contemporary art, Casali was onthe prudent side, eschewing artists who could in any way constitute rivals. Inpreference to painters of historical subjects, then, he chose genre painters,including the landscapists Alessio de Marchis, Andrea Locatelli, Jan Frans van

1. Domenico Zampieri, called Domenichino, A Triumphal Arch, 1607-15, oilon canvas, Museo del Prado, Madrid

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Bloemen, Giovanni Battista Busiri or the relatively unknown AgostinoIrlandieri. Among the few exceptions was a Madonna with Child and Saint Johnby Francesco Trevisani, priced in the inventory at 25 scudi.

A large number of these paintings Casali obtained from a standard sourcefor dealers of the period: the collections of Roman aristocrats who wereexperiencing serious cash-flow problems, mainly because of a sharp fall inrevenue from land. Princes, noblemen and marquesses were therefore readyto sell off personal possessions if the price was right and could be paid in cash.The Barberinis, for example, had started to dismantle parts of their galleries inthe late seventeenth century, as demonstrated by the various lots of paintingsauctioned in London; these varied from the lot of a hundred items belongingto Cardinal Antonio, auctioned on 23 November 1691 at Millington’s, or thetwenty-four sold by Roberts in 1724, to the forty-two at Christie’s on 3 March1805.16

An even more important source for Casali, however, was the Rome marketitself, a clearing-house for large numbers of paintings from the Campagnaand the surrounding states or considerably further afield. Late in 1712, forexample, Stefano Libert put over 200 Flemish and Dutch paintings on themarket, which within a few months had found their way into the hands of thepainter and dealer Biagio Puccini.17

In 1740, at a low ebb in his personal and professional life, Casali decided togo to England, persuaded by a number of British Grand Tourists and artlovers, which definitely included the Earl of Carlisle, Sir Charles Frederick(Fig. 2) and possibly also Lord Castlemaine. Once in London, Casali naturallyresumed his work as a painter, gradually becoming part of the circle thatfrequented the Turk’s Head tavern in Gerrard Street and quickly emerging asa significant figure, to the extent not only of exhibiting both at the Society ofthe Artists and at the Free Society but also of winning four prizes.18 In sodoing, he was, of course, following in the wake of the many Roman painters,and even more Venetians – Ricci, Amigoni, Zuccarelli and, of course,Canaletto and Bellotto – who moved around Europe in search of new workopportunities.19 In England, too, Casali set to work as art dealer, and it isinteresting to speculate on how he reacted to his new surroundings andcircumstances.

In some respects his practice remained virtually unchanged. He continued,for example, to deal in the same basic types and genres but extended his rangeof contemporary work to include some of the better-established Britishpainters. What he did change was his sales methods and public. While inRome, he had conducted all proceedings personally, on a one-to-one basis,from his studio, where he could appear as the perfect gentleman and maestro,offering for sale Old Masters, proposing himself as their legitimate heir. Hiscustomers were, then, for the most part the same people who commissionedor purchased his own paintings from him: members of the aristocracy or ofthe clergy, high-ranking functionaries of the Papal State, entrepreneurs orforeign ambassadors and visitors.

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Once in Britain, however, Casali also added a more complex dimension tohis business. Rather than selling one piece at a time, he now sold by auction,with the assistance of a local auctioneer, and occasionally, as in 1762 and1766, selling whole collections.20 These consisted of a few sculptures andscores of paintings: some of them his own, some by contemporary artistsexpert in genre painting (almost always English) and the rest by famous OldMasters, generally from Rome, as attested by an export licence from 1764,signed by Johann Joachim Winckelmann, for a Sassoferrato Madonna, a Headby Lorenzo Pasinelli and two landscapes by Jan Frans van Bloemen, known asOrizzonte.21 These would be accompanied by a catalogue, which had the dualpurpose of publicising the event and advertising the different lots to beauctioned.

2. Andrea Casali, Sir Charles Frederick, 1738, oil on canvas, AshmoleanMuseum, Oxford



In so doing, Casali was simply availing himself of a well-oiled mechanism.In eighteenth-century England, and in London in particular, public auctionswere frequent and fashionable events, which attracted huge crowds anxiousless to buy than to be seen to buy.22 The art–money link, once so carefullyhidden or sacrificed on the altar of rigid moral precepts, had become thecornerstone of highly urbane occasions. The anonymous producer of thefollowing rhyming couplets from 1733 might well write:

In curious paintings I’m exceeding niceAnd know their several beauties by their Price.Auctions and Sales I constantly attend,But chuse my pictures by a skilful friend.Originals and Copies are much the same,The picture’s value is the painter’s name.My taste in sculpture from my choice is seen,I buy no statues that are not obscene.23

In Rome things were rather different. It was not so much that auctions werealien to the city – quite the reverse. One of the many auctions, as has recentlybeen demonstrated, was part of a full-blown lottery-mania, since in theeighteenth century it was relatively normal for lotteries to be held in whichthe prizes were works of art rather than money.24 One such example was heldin 1739, when the widow of the painter and dealer Nicolas Vleughels decidedto put up for lottery the important collection left her by her husband.25

Another kind of auction was that of a private estate. As early as 1581, forexample, the French traveller Michel de Montaigne had given a detaileddescription of one such event:

Right after dinner the French ambassador sent me a messenger to tell me that,if I wished, he could come and collect me with his coach to attend the sale of thefurniture of Cardinal Orsini, who had died in Naples, leaving all his immenseestate to his small nephew. Among other rarities there was a taffeta bedcover,lined with swan skin (...). I have similarly seen the egg of an ostrich, completelydecorated and painted with beautiful figures, and also a square jewel box, witha quantity of jewels inside; but, the box being lined with mirrors, it seemedmuch larger and deeper than it truly was and seemed to contain ten times morejewels, every single piece therein being reflected many times by the mirrors, andthe mirrors themselves not easy to detect.26

In 1740 Horace Walpole purchased from the estate of Cardinal PietroOttoboni a famous Vespasian made of touchstone: it was resold in 1842 for£220.27 The stock was eclectic, ranging from extremely prestigious pieces totrifles worth a few bajocchi (the hundredth part of a Roman scudo). At theauction in 1786 of the estate of Cardinal Innocenzo Conti, for example, finepaintings by artists such as Benedetto Luti, Pompeo Batoni and Anton vonMaron rubbed shoulders with a number of ‘items of furniture’.28 A lowerstandard of painting, however, was on view in the sale in 1792 of the estate of

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Cardinal Giuseppe Garampi, a key figure in mid-eighteenth-century Romanculture, who hired some dozens of paintings from the master mason GiuseppeSardi.29

The real reason Casali avoided this particular method of purchase in Romewas more a question of the different level of esteem in which buying andselling was held. At least officially, it had connotations of ‘filthy lucre’ and wasconsidered incompatible with the role of practitioner of the fine arts. An artistwho had personally organised an auction would thus have forfeited all theiracademic decorum and would have been directly disobeying the instructionsof the Accademia di San Luca, the body controlling the capital’s art world,since its statutes expressly forbade any such activity. The many artists whodid, however, trade were forced into under-the-counter operations.30 Maratti,for example, delegated much of his sales activities to his wife, FrancescaGommi; Pier Leone Ghezzi even went so far as to pass himself off as amoralising satirist, in one famous caricature, entitled Congresso degliAntiquari, castigating the whole class of Roman collectors for their ‘buyingand selling’ (fare del comprare e del vendere).31 The last few years of Casali’s lifeillustrate the point vividly. On his return to Rome in 1765, Casali immediatelytook up where he had left off, as though he had never been to London, notbothering with public auctions and instead downsizing to one-to-one dealing.

In addition, and possibly because of his advanced age, he took the decisionto convert almost all his wealth (not inconsiderable, thanks to his ability as adealer) into solid and respectable items. In 1784 Casali’s estate amounted tojust under 9,000 Roman scudi – around £2,250 – enough in Rome to buy ahandsome palazzo.32 His estate tells us a lot about his mentality during theselast years in Rome. About two-thirds of it was invested in bonds issued by theChurch, the so-called Luoghi di Monte. Of the 3,500 scudi left, less than 1,000

were invested in silverware, about 1,500 were in jewels, and his Knight’s Crosswas valued at 900. Another 410 scudi were spent on three beautiful coaches,including one two-seater (painted in pearl grey outside, with light blue drapesinside, valued at 100 scudi), a large four-seater (with a dark red wood veneeroutside and dark green inside, valued at 150 scudi) and another two-seater(yellow outside and with green curtains inside, valued at 160 scudi). Only 400

scudi were invested in art and furniture – that is, on the art market. In otherwords, in his last period in Rome, Casali abandoned his entrepreneurial spiritand behaved like a steady, wealthy gentleman of the so-called ancien régime.The only concrete legacy of the years in England was in the small but splendidChurch of the Fathers of the Trinity in via Condotti, where the painter and hisdaughter Virginia attended Mass every Sunday. Over the years Casalimanaged to furnish almost all the chapels with something like fifteencanvases, including three large altarpieces, all free of charge. Whether thesepaintings should be considered signs of devotion, piety and friendship to theFathers is an open question. What is certain is that, by doing this, Casalimanaged to set up a permanent, public exhibition of his work only a stone’sthrow away from his home and studio. Whoever stepped inside the church



was forced to consider themselves as being inside the temple of a greatcontemporary master.

In 1756 – or at the latest 1758 – while Casali was still in Britain, a youngScotsman named James Byres (Fig. 3) arrived in Rome. Byres more or lesssettled in the city until 1790, when he left to return to his native village ofTonley, in Aberdeenshire.33 Byres’s cultural background was quite differentfrom Casali’s. Born in 1737, he was drawn to Rome not only by political andreligious considerations, as many Scots were, but also by professional ones. Hegreatly wanted to become a painter, and once in Rome managed to becomeapprenticed to the greatest master in town, Mengs. This was definitely beyondhis limited talents. It is true that Byres made some friends among Mengs’scircle, such as the Austrian painter Anton von Maron,34 but the maestro himselfquickly made Byres understand that he had better forget any great ambitionshe might have as a painter and turn perhaps to miniatures and enamels. It was

3. James Tassie, James Byres of Tonley, 1779, paste, Scottish NationalPortrait Gallery, Edinburgh

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clearly a severe blow, but Byres refused to renounce the arts and promptlystarted studying ancient buildings in order to become an architect. In this fieldhe quite quickly became a professional: he was admitted to the Accademia diSan Luca and had his portrait painted at least twice: first by Maron and then byDavid Allan. But again all his hopes proved to be in vain. In modern terms, hewas a ‘virtual’ architect: if he had been given a penny for every drawingrelating to one of his projects, he would have become rich.35 He designedsplendid city and country houses, arranged with galleries and libraries, as inthe case of his client Sir Watkins Williams Wynn.36 But only a few, minorprojects were actually ever executed. In Rome he never gave himself a chanceto compete; in Britain his style suffered greatly from the rivalry of well-established and more modern architects, not least the Adam brothers.

In the early 1760s Byres turned to alternative occupations. He became aguide, one of the most popular and appreciated of the Grand Tourists of histimes. His clients were all English-speaking: that is, most were British with afew Americans. Byres’s method was to gather them together in classes ofbetween six and twelve, or sometimes more, and travel with them in the cityor in its immediate environs. His courses usually lasted five or six weeks. Foreach week the client paid £10 (43 Roman scudi), around three times as muchas any of the other ciceroni of his time, such as Colin Morison.37 According toThomas Jones, writing in 1780: ‘He was [...] the principal Antiquarian to theEnglish, or Person who attended Strangers to shew and explain the VariousBuildings both Modern and antient, Statues and pictures and otherCuriosities in this City and its Environs.’38

In addition to designing never-to-be-built buildings and escortingtravellers, Byres found the time to work as a dealer, occasionally on behalf ofa third party, as in the case of Brownlow Cecil, 9th Earl of Exeter, whoemployed him in 1764 to acquire the Assumption of the Virgin by the Frenchseventeenth-century painter Nicolas Poussin, now in Washington (Fig. 4).Most of the time, however, Byres was a true dealer, selling pieces owned byhimself. He managed to establish a solid, concrete practice, in collaborationwith several people, among whom were the engraver Christopher Norton,later to become his brother-in-law – he appears in another family portrait(Fig. 5) – and his nephew Patrick Moir. With their assistance, the enterpriselasted even after Byres’s return to Scotland, run first by Moir and later byJames Irvine.

The range of goods Byres was offering was wide, even wider than Casali’s.For Byres, in fact, the point was not the type of piece but its quality. Like manyof his English colleagues, Byres attached great importance to ancient pieces,from small cameos, intaglios or engraved stones to considerably larger items.The export licences show the presence of heads, masks, busts and statues, suchas the two sent in 1784, 10 Roman feet high. Some of these pieces were original,such as the so-called Portland Vase, sold for £1,000 (Fig. 6).39 Others werecopies: Byres sold, for instance, copies of the Aldobrandini Marriage orof the same Portland Vase, reproduced by the famous jeweller Johann Pickler,



as well as a number of plaster casts. A large quantity of pieces werearrangements or pastiches made by local sculptors, making use of bothancient and modern materials: for example, he sold many tables andchimneypieces. We have no information as to how honest he was, or whetherhe always told his clients that what he was selling was in fact a partial or a totalfake. What we do know is that some of these objects were not of exceptionaltaste, and bordered on kitsch: this is the case, for instance, with some piecesdescribed in his inventories as ‘the statue of a boy and of a dolphin to serve asa lamp’.40 Overall, the branch of the enterprise devoted to antique, semi-antique or pseudo-antique pieces made important sums of money. The glypticfield, the only one where exact records still exist, was valued at 3,700 scudi:2,500 scudi of engraved stones and 1,200 of stones to be worked.

A second, crucial branch of his enterprise dealt with art objects from theRenaissance onwards. Some of these objects fetched a tremendous price: a

4. Nicolas Poussin, The Assumption of the Virgin, c. 1630-32, oil on canvas,National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

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Venus Anadyomene believed to be by Correggio, for instance, was quoted at asmuch as 6,000 scudi. Byres, however, also had large quantities of so-called‘furniture pieces’, with more affordable prices – less than 100 scudi – perfectto fill a free expanse of wall between true masterpieces. The dealer put theaccent on ‘classicist’ Italian painters: in other words, the sort of stylisticgenealogy that starts from Raphael and stretches through the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries, comprising both history paintings and landscapes bysuch masters as Annibale Carracci, Guido Reni, Nicolas Poussin, ClaudeLorrain and Carlo Maratti.

On the other hand, both as dealer and as a guide, Byres displayed anunrelenting hatred of the Baroque. A number of clients’ travel journals arevery clear on this point. To Byres, Bernini’s statue of Santa Bibiana was ‘tooaffected, too much in the style of an Opera girl’; when visiting the VillaBorghese, he ‘could hardly look with patience at the statues the master hadrealised for Cardinal Scipione’; to his eyes the statue of Saint Theresa in thechurch of Santa Maria della Vittoria – now believed to be one of the triumphsof the whole century – was ‘affected and manierée to the higher degree’.41

This was actually nothing startling: many other Roman dealers of the time,responding to public taste, felt exactly the same.42

Byres’s third and last field of activity was contemporary painting. He was amajor patron of some of the most promising British artists of the time – such

5. Franciszek Smuglevicz, James Byres of Tonley and Members of his Family,c. 1776, oil on canvas, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh



as David Allan, Henry Raeburn and Alexander Nasmyth – who used hisacquaintance while in Rome to obtain commissions from collectors andpatrons. In this area Byres had a strong rival in Thomas Jenkins, and Britishartists then trying to make out their way in Rome found themselves facing adifficult choice.43

Byres replenished his stock from several sources. For antiques he could relyon pieces unearthed directly from contemporary excavations: this becamemore difficult after 1775, when Pope Pius VI started to compete strongly withBritish dealers, in order to complete his new museum at the Vatican; at onepoint he actually prohibited exports.44 A second, crucial source of bothClassical marbles and Old Master paintings was Roman historical collectionsbelonging to the aristocrats. Poussin’s Assumption of the Virgin (Fig. 4) came,for instance, from the Soderini family; the Portland Vase (Fig. 6) from PrincessBarberini, who used it to pay off her gambling debts (she was a fervent cardplayer); while the complete series of the Seven Sacraments, also by Poussin,

6. The Portland Vase, glass, c. AD 1-25, British Museum, London

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came from the Boccapaduli family (Fig. 7). To convince people of this rank tosell was no easy task. There was, besides, a strong and efficient papal law – theso called fidei commissum – designed to keep these masterpieces in theirrightful places. Byres, however, had the perfect method of solving theseproblems and doing business. He would simply order copies of the paintingsand then exchange them for the originals. In this he was simply drawing on along-established Roman and Italian tradition. The same method had beenused, for example, by Cardinal Scipione Borghese at the beginning of thesixteenth century, when he ordered Raphael’s Deposition from the Cross(Fig. 8) to be removed from the Baglioni Chapel, in Perugia, and replaced by acopy made on commission by Cavaliere d’Arpino (Fig. 9). This caused atremendous outcry locally, but to absolutely no avail. Later in the samecentury it happened again in northern Italy, where Duke Francesco d’Estedecided his collections needed some of the best altarpieces by Correggio,originally in churches in or near Modena. This was the fate of the so-calledMadonna of Saint George, for example, originally painted for the Oratory of SanPietro Martire in Modena, and of the even more famous Adoration of theShepherds (The Night) (Fig. 10). The removal from their previous locationmeant they automatically became part of the market system: and indeed,when Este’s fortunes waned in the eighteenth century, they were both sold tothe great collector Augustus III of Saxony. Again, the same thing happened in

7. Nicolas Poussin, The Baptism of Christ, 1641/2, oil on canvas, NationalGallery of Art, Washington, DC



the mid-eighteenth century with another masterpiece of Italian art, theMadonna of Saint Sixtus by Raphael, which was smuggled by Italian agents ofthe same Augustus III from a convent near Piacenza.45 Byres was surely wellaware of these precedents when commissioning from an almost unknownFlemish painter, André de Muynck, copies of all the Poussins owned by theBoccapaduli family: one by one these copies took the place of the originals,which were immediately shipped to England.46 Their client was the Duke ofLeicester, who, before hanging them, had them restored by Joshua Reynolds.Even the copies survived, and, ironic though it may seem, they have acquiredover the years a considerable historical if not artistic value; for this reasonthey have recently been acquired by Rome’s Capitoline Museums and placedin the Museo di Roma. In the case of contemporary paintings, Byres receivedalmost all such works directly from the artist. Some of them were even givento him, spontaneously, in the hope of future commissions, as suggested above.This was true in particular of portraits, which were hung in Byres’s house.

8. Raphael, The Deposition from the Cross, 1507, oil on wood, GalleriaBorghese, Rome

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It would not be inappropriate to say that Byres had an internationalclientele: in the field of small pieces of antiquity, in particular, he was able toreach almost every collection in Europe, including that of the Empress QueenCatherine of Russia. Nonetheless, the hard core of his business relied on thecircuit of the British Grand Tour. To reach this rank of clientele he deployedvarious networking strategies, but, above all, he always tried to present apositive and attractive image to the world. It was only as an elderly man thathis temper grew short, and his inclinations on the mean side, although thismay have been related to his increasing deafness. Quite often Byres made thefirst contact with his potential clients through his tours. While guiding themaround, there was plenty of time to spot the most promising visitors: thosewho both loved art and had enough money to buy it. It was then relatively toeasy invite them home for dinner and casually show them his collection.

While in Rome, Byres tried his utmost to establish himself in the Britishenclave. He shared his lodgings with compatriots, always choosing theso-called ‘English ghetto’, the upper Campo Marzio – that peculiar part of

9. Giuseppe Cesari, called Cavaliere d’Arpino, after Raphael, The Depositionfrom the Cross, c. 1608, oil on wood, Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, Perugia



Rome dominated by British residents, British hotels and British cafés. Hisprofessional life was equally oriented toward clients, intermediaries andpatrons who lived thousands of miles away, the other side of the Channel.And although he read and spoke Italian, the only correspondence that hassurvived to the present day is written in English. However, he did not live in apurely English atmosphere: Roman air leaked into his lungs and mind. Theevidence can be found in his library, or rather, in the inventory of the booksthat formed it, still preserved in the National Library of Scotland.47 Byres hadassembled a collection of approximately 500 books and 100 pamphlets. It wasan international collection, with British titles standing alongside French,Latin and, of course, Italian works. There was even a Greek text, although onewonders if Byres was actually able to read it. This collection had two differentorientations. One was very international and far-reaching: it covered many

10. Correggio, The Adoration of the Sheperds (The Night), 1522-30, oil onwood, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

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different subjects – from mathematics to astrology, from science to physics andgeography – and comprised texts from a variety of cultural traditions. Thissection was probably devoted to fulfilling the cultural needs of societyconversation: a man who wanted to mix with the highest ranks, as Byres did,had to have an idea of the world and of its basic contents. The secondorientation of the library was directly towards painting, architecture (often

11. Filippo Titi, Nuovo Studio di pittura, scoltura e architettura nelle chiese diRoma (...), Rome, 1708, frontispiece



connected with Roman archaeology), topography and guides. Most of thesevolumes were by Italian authors, such as Ridolfino Venuti, Giuseppe Vasi,Gregorio Roisecco or Filippo Titi (Fig. 11).48 Thus the instructions that Byresgave his compatriots visiting Rome and Italy were taken directly from localliterature: and, it must be added, from a peculiar form of literature, stillsomewhat undervalued.49

Andrea Casali’s and James Byres’s stories are not unique. Other goodexamples could be given from the lives of art dealers such as Antonio Borioni,Francesco Ficoroni, Giovanni Battista Piranesi and Thomas Jenkins. Jenkins,in particular, should be studied in relation to Nicholas Mosman andBrownlow Cecil, the Earl of Exeter, the connections between the three menleading to the fine collection of Mosman’s drawings now in the BritishMuseum. Many of these figures and much of this material were generallyignored until recent times, other than in purely economic terms. On the otherhand, these two simple stories show quite clearly, from opposite sides, howexchanges between Rome and Great Britain through the art market couldreach different levels, involving complex dynamics of taste and culture.

NOTES1. There is a considerable amount of material available on the so-called ‘fine art market’ or

‘free art market’, where ‘free’ distinguishes this sector from the parallel and inter-relatedphenomenon of commissioned work. For a general overview and ample basic bibliography seeF. Haskell, ‘Fine Arts: Arts and Society’, in International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, ed. D. Sills,18 vols (New York and London: Macmillan, 1968-1979), vol. V.439-47; P. Bourdieu, ‘Le marchédes biens symboliques’, in L’Année Sociologique (1970), p.49-126; B. Toscano, ‘Collezionismo emercato’, in Enciclopedia Feltrinelli Fischer: Arte 2, ed. G. Previtali (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1971), vol.I.106-23, vol. II.622; A. Villani, L’economia dell’arte: mercato e piano (Milan: Vita e Pensiero,1978); P. Bourdieu, The Love of Art (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1986); J. M. Montias, Vermeer andHis Milieu: A Web of Social History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989); I.Bignamini and E. Castelnuovo, ‘Arte e società’, in Enciclopedia delle scienze sociali, 9 vols (Rome:Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1991-2001), vol. I.319-339, esp. I.333-5; S. Ricossa (ed.), Imercati dell’arte: aspetti pubblici e privati, (Turin: Umberto Allemandi, 1991); K. Pomian,‘Introduction: L’art entre le musée et le marché’, in Le commerce de l’art de la Renaissance à nosjours, ed. L. B. Dorléac (Besançon: La Manufacture, 1992); R. Moulin, L’artiste, l’institution et lemarché (Paris: Flammarion, 1992); R. A. Goldthwaite, Ricchezza e domanda nel mercato dell’arte inItalia dal Trecento al Seicento: la cultura materiale e le origini del consumismo (Milan: Unicopli, 1993);R. Moulin, De la valeur de l’art (Paris: Flammarion, 1995); M. North (ed.), Economic History andthe Arts, Wirtschafts- und Sozialhistorische Studien 5 (Cologne: Bölau, 1996); M. North and D.Omrod, ‘Introduction’, in Art Markets in Europe, 1400-1800, ed. M. North and D. Ormrod(Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), p.4-8; Economia e arte secc. XIII-XVIII, proceedings of conference atPrato, 2000, ed. S. Cavaciocchi (Florence: Le Monnier, 2002).

A number of works have centred on the situation in seventeenth-century Rome, some of themore significant of which are: F. Haskell, Patrons and Painters: A Study in the Relations betweenItalian Art and Society in the Age of the Baroque (London: Chatto and Windus, 1963; Italian ednTurin, 2002); L. Lutz, ‘Zur Papstfinanz von Klemens IX. bis Alexander VIII. (1667-1691)’, inRömische Quartalschift für Christliche Altertumshunde und Kirchengeschichte 74 (1979), p.32-90; R.Merolla, ‘Lo stato della chiesa’, in Letteratura italiana: historia e geografia, vol. 2: L’età moderna(Turin: Einaudi, 1988), p.1019-1109; L. Spezzaferro, ‘Pier Francesco Mola e il mercato artisticoromano; atteggiamenti e valutazioni’, in Pier Francesco Mola. 1612-1666, exh. cat., ed. M. KahnRossi (Milan: Electa, 1989), p.40-59; V. Reinhardt, ‘The Roman Art Market in the Sixteenth andSeventeenth Centuries’, in Art Markets in Europe, p.81-92. On the eighteenth century, see P.Coen, Il mercato dei quadri a Roma nel diciottesimo secolo: la domanda, l’offerta e la circolazione delleopere in un grande centro artistico europeo, 2 vols (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2010).

308 PAOLO COEN


2. On Casali’s life and activity as a painter, with full bibliography, see O. Michel, in Dizionariobiografico degli italiani (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1960-), vol. XXI.65-9; TheDictionary of Art, ed. J. Turner, 34 vols (New York and London: Macmillan, 1996), vol. V.906-7;S. C. Martin, in Allgemeines Künstler-Lexikon (Leipzig and Munich: Saur 1995-) vol. XVII.50. OnCasali as a dealer see Coen, Il mercato dei quadri with complete philological transcription andcritical analysis of his previously unknown posthumous documents, such as the last will, theadditions to the last will and the inventory of goods: Archivio di Stato, Rome (abbreviated insubsequent references as ‘ASR’), Trenta Notai Capitolini, uff. 19, vol. 688, 11 September 1784,cc. 110-136v, 141-181v, 192-205v; copy in Archivio Storico Capitolino, Rome (abbreviated insubsequent references as ‘ASC’), Archivio Generale Urbano, sez. XIX, prot. 117, not. P. Pacioni,8 September 1784, cc. 308, 310, 350-361v, 410-417v.

3. On Ottoboni as a patron of the arts and collector see F. Matitti, ‘Il cardinale PietroOttoboni mecenate delle arti: cronache e documenti (1689-1740)’, in Roma tardobarocca, Storiadell’Arte 85 (1995), p.156-243; E. J. Olzewski, ‘Decorating the Palace: Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni(1667-1740) in the Cancelleria’, in Life and the Arts in the Baroque Palaces of Rome: AmbienteBarocco, ed. S. Walker (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), p.92-111; E. J. Olzewski,‘The Enlightened Patronage of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni (1667-1740)’, in Artibus et Historiae 23

(2002), p.139-65; and E. J. Olzewski, The Inventory of Paintings of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni (1667-1740) (New York: Lang, 2004). For a critical discussion of Ottoboni’s patronage, an updatedaccount of the research and new documents, see R. Settino, ‘Il cardinale Pietro Ottobonicommittente e collezionista romano nell’età dell’Arcadia’, degree thesis, Università dellaCalabria, 2006.

4. The activity of the Accademia di San Luca throughout the eighteenth and the nineteenthcenturies is analysed in Aequa Potestas: le arti in gara a Roma nel Settecento, exh. cat., ed. A.Cipriani (Rome: De Luca, 2000).

5. A. Lo Bianco, ‘Gli affreschi di San Sisto Vecchio e l’attività romana di Andrea Casali’, inProspettiva 57:70 (1989-90), p.316-26.

6. See S. Schütze, ‘Arte liberalissima e lobilissima: die Künstlernobilitierung im päpstlichenRom – ein Beitrag zur Sozialgeschichte des Künstlers in der frühen Neuzeit’, Zeitschrift fürKunstgeschichte 55 (1992), p.319-52. For Vasi’s and Piranesi’s peculiar use of the title of ‘knight’,see: P. Coen, Le magnificenze di Roma di Giuseppe Vasi (Rome: Newton and Compton, 1996); P.Coen, ‘Convenzioni sociali e nuove evidenze biografiche in un autoritratto culturale di GiuseppeVasi’, in Giovanni Battista Piranesi: 1720-1778: vedute di Roma dalla collezione Eugen Brüschwiler,exh. cat., ed. C. Tempesta and R. Barbiellini Amidei (Rome: Regione Lazio, 2000), p.20-23;P. Coen, ‘Arte, cultura e mercato in una bottega romana del XVIII secolo: l’impresa calcograficadi Giuseppe e Mariano Vasi fra continuità e rinnovamento’, Bollettino d’Arte 86 (2001), p.23-74.Vasi used to wear the knight’s cross during ceremonies and on special occasions, keeping italways by him almost up until his death. In the very last years, however, his illness and the urgefor money pushed his son and heir Mariano to give the cross to the state pawnbroker’s, theMonte di Pietà, for 14 Roman scudi; see ASC, Archivio Generale Urbano, sez. 30, prot. 91, notaioG. Lorenzini, 6 May 1782, c. 115: ‘Altro [scil. bollettino dei pegni] quarto Monte settimo custode1782. 5 January n.o 48967, paoli 140 a tergo 1780 n. 65033 croce alla cavaliera’. This passagewas taken from Vasi’s inventory of goods, which together with other documents was publishedand critically analysed in Coen, ‘Arte, cultura e mercato’, p.72.

7. A. Adami, Storia di Volseno (Rome: De Rossi, 1737), p.106.8. For a synthetic overview of the different levels of demand for art in eighteenth-century

Rome, see P. Coen, ‘Vendere e affittare quadri: Giuseppe Sardi, capomastro e mercante d’arte(Roma, XVIII sec.)’, in Mercanti di quadri, ed. L. Spezzaferro, Quaderni Storici 39 (2004), p.421-48.

9. M. de Lalande, Voyage d’un françois en Italie, fait dans les années 1765 & 1766, 8 vols (Venice:Denise, 1769), p.222-3.

10. On Carlo Maratti as dealer see Coen, Il mercato dei quadri, p.52-7. For a close comparisonwith the market of the so-called Caravaggesque, see also Paolo Coen, ‘Caravaggio e alcunicaravaggeschi nel mercato d’arte romano del secondo Settecento’, in Caravaggio e l’Europa: ilmovimento caravaggesco internazionale, ed. L. Spezzaferro, proceedings of conference in Milan,2006 (Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana, 2006), p.148-56.

11. The principal work on the whole important phenomenon of the dispersal of Italy’s artisticheritage remains that of E. Battisti, ‘Postille documentarie su artisti italiani a Madrid e sullacollezione Maratti’, in Arte Antica e Moderna 9 (1960), p.77-89. A detailed summary of the



episode can be found in Coen, Il mercato dei quadri, p.207-11. The first key figure in the sale wasFaustina Maratti, the daughter of Carlo Maratti and Francesca Gommi and the wife of GiovanniBattista Zappi, a nobleman from Imola. In 1713 Faustina inherited her father’s collection of over500 paintings. Carlo’s will stated that the collection should be sold en bloc straight after hisdeath, but Faustina obeyed only seven years later, in 1720, and at the end kept a good portion ofthe pictures in her house: see her inventory in ASR, Notai dell’Auditor Camerae, not. A. A. DeCaesaris, 1 June 1745, b. 1853, cc. 119-129v, 74-76v, 105-107v; 164-169, 78-78v, 103, publishedand discussed in Coen, Il mercato dei quadri, p.363-87. A second key figure in the sale was AndreaProcaccini, trained as a painter by Maratti and from 1720 on the main artistic agent of the kingof Spain. Beside Maratti’s paintings, Procaccini also made possible the sale in Spain of theOdescalchis’ marble collection, formerly belonging to Queen Christina of Sweden. For acomplete analysis of this side of his activity see again Coen, Il mercato dei quadri, p.145-7, with afull transcription of previously unknown documents, such as the inventory of goods: ASR,Trenta Notai Capitolini, uff. 31, vol. 460, 10 June 1735, c. 692-697v, 724-725.

12. Sebastiano e Giuseppe Ghezzi, exh. cat., ed. G. de Marchi (Venice: Marsilio, 1999); Pier LeoneGhezzi: Settecento alla moda, exh. cat., ed. A. Lo Bianco (Venice: Marsilio, 1999). See also theentries on both Giuseppe and Pier Leone Ghezzi by P. Coen in Allgemeines Lexikon, vol. LIII.15-24.

13. For a list of goods dealt with by Casali, see: A Catalogue of the Genuine Collection of Picturesof Chevalier Andrea Casali (London, 1762); A Catalogue of the Genuine Collection of Pictures ofChevalier Andrea Casali (London, 1766); ASR, Camerale II, Antichità e Belle Arti, fasc. 283, 29

August 1764; his inventory of goods as quoted in Coen, Il mercato dei quadri, p.608-21.14. E. A. Safarik and U. Torselli, La galleria Doria Pamphilj a Roma (Rome: Palombi, 1982), esp.

p.22-3, 79, 87-101, 105 ff., 115 ff., 127 ff.; G. Magnanimi, ‘Inventari della collezione romana deiprincipi Corsini’, Bollettino d’Arte 65 (1980), esp. p.95-8, n. 7; S. Slive, ‘Dutch Pictures in theCollection of Cardinal Valenti Gonzaga’, Simiolus 17 (1987), p.169-90; S. Cormio, ‘Il cardinaleSilvio Valenti Gonzaga promotore e protettore delle scienze e delle arti’, Bollettino d’Arte 35-6

(1986), p.49-66; S. Cormio, ‘L’inventario degli arredi del Cardinale Valenti Gonzaga’, Antologia diBelle Arti 39-42 (1991-2), p.148-66; P. Coen, ‘Giovanni Paolo Pannini, La galleria del cardinaleSilvio Valenti Gonzaga’, in Ritratto di una collezione: Pannini e la galleria del cardinale Silvio ValentiGonzaga, exh. cat., ed. R. Morselli and R. Vodret (Milan: Skira, 2005), p.167-9; P. Coen, ‘SilvioValenti Gonzaga e il mercato artistico romano del XVIII secolo’, Ritratto di una collezione: Panninie la Galleria del cardinale Silvio Valenti Gonzaga, exh. cat., ed. R. Morselli and R. Vodret (Milan:Skira, 2005), p.209-31.

15. P. Coen, ‘Quadri “da mobilia” e (presunti) capolavori per un pubblico di alto livello:Ludovico Mirri (m. 1786), mercante d’arte nella Roma di Pio VI’, in Promuovere le arti:intermediari, pubblico e mercato a Roma fra XVIII e XIX secolo, Ricerche di Storia dell’Arte 90

(2006), p.33-42.16. F. Lugt, Répertoire des catalogues de ventes publiques intéressant l’art ou la curiosité, 4 vols

(The Hague: Nijhoff, 1938-87), vol. I, notes 121, 403, L 6918.17. ASR, Trenta Notai Capitolini, uff. 7, not. L.A. Neri, vol. 283, 15 July 1712, cc. 64-66v, 69.

My thanks to Vittorio Casale for bringing this document to my attention.18. A. Graves, The Society of Artists in Great Britain 1760-1791, The Free Society of Artists

1761-1783 (London: G. Bell, 1907), p.52; W. T. Whitley, Artists and their Friends in England,1700-1799 (London: Medici Society, 1928), vol. I.120.

19. For a recent general overview of eighteenth-century Italian-English relations in the artssee N. Llewellyn, ‘Those Loose and Immodest Pieces’: Italian Art and the British Italian Culture inNorthern Europe in the Eighteenth Century, ed. S. West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1999), p.67-100; S. West, ‘Xenophobia and Xenomania: Italians and the English RoyalAcademy’, Italian Art and the British Italian Culture in Northern Europe in the Eighteenth Century,p.116-39. For Rome, see L. Barroero and S. Susinno, ‘Arcadian Rome, Capital of the Arts’, in Artin Rome in the Eighteenth Century, exh. cat., ed. E. P. Bowron and J. Rishel (Philadelphia, PA, andLondon: Merrell Publishers, 2000), p.47-75. For Venice and the Veneto, besides Francis Haskell’sPatrons and Painters see also B. Aikema, ‘La pittura del Settecento a Venezia’, in La pittura in Italia:il Settecento, ed. G. Briganti (Milan: Electa, 1989), p.169-208; F. Pedrocco, Il Settecento a Venezia:i vedutisti (Milan: Rizzoli, 2001); L. Hellinga, ‘Il console Joseph Smith collezionista a Venezia peril mercato inglese’, La Bibliofilia 102 (2001), p.109-21. On Zuccarelli, see M. Levey, ‘Zuccarelli inEngland’, Italian Studies 14 (1959), p.241-72. On Amigoni, see J. Woodward, ‘Amigoni as PortraitPainter in England’, The Burlington Magazine 99 (1957), p.21-3. On Canaletto’s life and career,the seminal work still remains J. J. Constable, Canaletto, rev. J. G. Links (Oxford: Clarendon Press,

310 PAOLO COEN


1976); on his English sojourn and international clientele see also J. G. Links, Canaletto and hisPatrons (London: Elek 1977); J. G. Links, Canaletto, 3rd edn (London: Phaidon, 1994); K. Baetjer,Canaletto, ed. P. Coen (Rome: Newton Compton, 1996); Canaletto in England: A Venetian Abroad,1746-1765, exh. cat. (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2006). On Guglielmisee E. Gabrielli, Gregorio Guglielmi: pittore romano del Settecento, exh. cat. (Rome: IstitutoPoligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 2009).

20. For the two auction catalogues see note 13 above. Both catalogues are now quite rare. Iwish to thank Olivier Michel here for photocopies from those in the Rijksmuseum.

21. ‘Desiderando [Andrea Casali] portar fuori di stato li sottoscritti quadri, supplica la suainnata bontà di aggraziarlo dell’opportuna licenza. / Una Madonna di Sassoferrato / Una testadi Pasinelli. Una Venere, e Adone in picciolo di autore incognito. Due Paesi di Orizzonte. Unoschizzo, e Madonna dell’Autore. Qualche Paesino di Agostino Irlandieri ad acquarella. QualcheMiniatura del P. Tacchetti.’ The pieces were examined by Giuseppe Pozzi, himself a painter, amember of the Accademia di San Luca and, as assessore ai dipinti, charged with inspecting andevaluating all the paintings that were going abroad. The following is Pozzi’s text, written justbelow Casali’s: ‘Io sottoscritto attesto di aver visitato numero dodici pezzi di quadri di diversegrandezze e di opera moderna stimati scudi cento moneta questo di 29 agosto 1764.’ The verysame day Johann Joachim Winckelmann, then Commissario alle Antichità e Belle Arti, gave hisapproval, which was followed two days later by that of Giovanangelo Braschi, the CardinalCamerlengo and formerly in charge of the Exportation Office. The licence was sent to Casali on4 September. See ASR, Camerale II, Antichità e Belle Arti, file 283.

22. L. Lippincott, Selling Art in Georgian London: The Rise of Arthur Pond (New Haven, CT: YaleUniversity Press, 1983); I. Pears, The Discovery of Painting: The Growth of Interest in the Arts inEngland, 1680-1768 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988).

23. The Man of Taste, Occasioned by an Epistle of Mr Pope’s on that Subject (London, 1733); seeF. Herrmann, The English as Collectors (London: Chatto and Windus, 1972), p.29.

24. See F. Rangoni, ‘“In communis vita splendidus et munificus”: la collezione di dipinti delcardinale di Cremona Desiderio Scaglia’, Paragone 52 (2001), n. 611, p.50 ff.; E. Welch, Shoppingin the Renaissance (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2006).

25. O. Michel, Vivre et peindre à Rome au XVIIIème siècle (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome,1996), p.119, 128-32.

26. D. Thornton, The Scholar in His Study: Ownership and Experience in Renaissance Italy (NewHaven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1997), p.25.

27. A. Michaelis, Ancient Marbles in Great Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1882), p.68.

28. C. Benocci, ‘Gli ultimi splendori di una grande famiglia: l’inventario dei quadri delcardinale Innocenzo Conti’, Ricerche di Storia dell’Arte 77 (2002), p.85-99.

29. New light on Garampi’s relationship with art may be found in P. Coen, Vendere e affittarequadri. Garampi’s view on art collecting and patronage has been analysed by V. Gentile, ‘Ilcardinale Giuseppe Garampi committente e collezionista d’arte’, degree thesis, Università dellaCalabria, 2007.

30. P. Coen, ‘I “quadrari” Giovanni Rumi e Giovanni Barbarossa, mercanti d’arteprofessionisti nella Roma del diciottesimo secolo e i loro rapporti con l’Accademia di SanLuca’, in Collezionismo, mercato, tutela: la promozione delle arti prima dell’unità, ed. L. Barroero,Roma Moderna e Contemporanea 13 (2005), p.347-64; P. Coen, Il mercato dei quadri, p.7-10,16-20.

31. P. Coen, ‘Agenti e mediatori nel mercato artistico romano di primo e medio Settecento:Pier Leone Ghezzi, Antonio Borioni e Silvio Valenti Gonzaga’, in Roma e la creazione di unpatrimonio europeo nella prima età moderna: l’impatto degli agenti e dei corrispondenti di arte earchitettura, conference proceedings, Rome, 2005, ed. C. Frank (forthcoming); P. Coen, ‘PierLeone Ghezzi mercante d’arte attraverso un codice romano inedito del XVIII secolo’, in Ladecorazione del libro manoscritto dal medioevo all’età moderna, conference proceedings, Cosenza,2006, ed. E. Talamo (forthcoming).

32. P. Coen, Il mercato dei quadri, p.608-21; ASR, Trenta Notai Capitolini, uff. 19, vol. 688, 11

September 1784, cc. 110-136v, 141-181v, 192-205v; ASC, Archivio Generale Urbano, sez. XIX,prot. 117, not. P. Pacioni, 8 September 1784, cc. 308, 310, 350-361v, 410-417v.

33. For a general profile, with full bibliography, see B. Ford, ‘James Byres: PrincipalAntiquarian for the English Visitors to Rome’, Apollo 99 (1974), p.446-61; J. Ingamells, ADictionary of British and Irish Travellers in Italy, 1600-1800 (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale



University Press, 1997), p.169-72. Some new material on Byres’s life is to be published as a resultof research carried out by John O’Connor. The date of Byres’s arrival in Rome, 1756 or 1758, isstill disputed. Problems exist in identifying Byres – who in fact was Scottish, Catholic and onlynineteen in 1756 – with ‘Monsu Baer inglese [anni] 28’, ‘Monsu Baer inglese [anni] 29’ and‘Monsu Baes eretico pittore [anni] 30’ registered in a mansion of Prince Altieri’s in Strada Felicein 1756, 1757 and 1758; see ASV, Stati delle anime, S. Andrea delle Fratte, 1756, cc. not numbered(but 18r), n. 83; Ibid., 1757-1758, cc. 16 n. 91, 82 n. 91. On this point see: Ford, James Byres,p.446-7; W. Dobrowolski, ‘The Drawings of Etruscan Tombs by Francyszec Smuglewicz and hisCooperation with James Byres’, Bulletin du Musée National de Varsovie 19 (1978), p.107-8. It isnow believed, then, that Byres only arrived in Rome two years later (i.e., in 1758), if we are to goby the so-called ‘Hayward’s List’; cf. L. Stainton, ‘Hayward’s List: British Visitors to Rome 1753-1775’, Journal of the Walpole Society 49 (1983), p.11, 18.

For Byres’s activity as dealer, with a critical reconsideration of documents concerning him orkept in the National Library of Scotland, see P. Coen, ‘Anton von Maron, Portrait of James Byres’,in Aequa Potestas, ed. A. Cipriani, p.33-4; P. Coen, ‘L’attività di mercante d’arte e il profiloculturale di James Byres of Tonley (1737-1824)’, in La città degli artisti nell’età di Pio VI, ed. L.Barroero and S. Susinno, Roma Moderna e Contemporanea 10 (2002), p.153-78; P. Coen,Il mercato dei quadri, p.70-7, 304-10.

34. On the relationship with Maron, see O. Michel, ‘Peintres autrichiens dans la secondemoitié du XVIIIème siècle, documents, I: Martin Knoller, Anton von Maron’, RömischeHistorische Mitteilungen 13 (1971), p.321-2. On 19 April 1770 Byres’s business partner,Christopher Norton, exported a painting by Maron, together with another by Pompeo Batoni;cf. A. Bertolotti, ‘Esportazione di oggetti di belle arti da Roma nei secoli XVI, XVII E XVIII’,Archivio Storico, Artistico Archeologico e Letterario della Città e Provincia di Roma 2 (1877), p.267.

35. A list of Byres’s projects as an architect is cited in Ford, James Byres.36. T. Mowl, ‘A Roman Palace for a Welsh Prince: Byres’ Designs for Sir Watkin Williams

Wynn’, Apollo 152 (1995), p.33-41.37. Ford, James Byres, p.461 note 79. On Morison’s biography see Ingamells, Dictionary,

p.679-82. The bulk of Morison’s post mortem documents – i.e., the last will in English, theinventory of goods and some papers related to the requisition of his collection by the French –are preserved in ASR, Trenta Notai Capitolini, uff. 4, vol. 571, not. G.B. Sacchi, 2-3 May, 26

August 1809, cc. 27-29v, 94-124, 1155-1180v. Taking this previously unknown material as abasis, I have given a full reconstruction of his activity as a dealer in the Roman context in Ilmercato dei quadri, p.666-89.

38. A. P. Oppé, ‘Memoirs of Thomas Jones’, Journal of the Walpole Society 32 (1951), p.94.39. D. E. L. Haynes, The Portland Vase (London: British Museum, 1975). For an account of the

Vase’s exceptional success in a neo-classical age, principally at the hands of the Wedgwoodcompany, see D. Irwin, Neoclassicism (London: Phaidon, 1997), p.213 ff.

40. National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh (abbreviated in subsequent references as ‘NLS’),Byres-Moir MSS, ‘Inventory of goods left by James Byres in his Roman house, 1790’, c. 6; seeP. Coen, L’attività di mercante, appendix 1; P. Coen, Il mercato dei quadri, p.666-89.

41. All three quoted in Ford, James Byres, p.458.42. For example, the Cignali family, Carlo Maratti, Antonio Borioni, Pier Leone Ghezzi,

Giovanni Paolo Pannini and Giovanni Barbarossa. On these dealers, see A. Dattilo, ‘Il mercatodei quadri a Roma tra Sei e Settecento’, degree thesis, Università della Calabria, 2005; V. Gentile,‘Il mercato dei dipinti a Roma attraverso le notificazioni del lotto (1710-1720)’, degree thesis,Università della Calabria, 2005; M. F. Palmieri, ‘Il mercato dei dipinti a Roma attraverso lenotificazioni del lotto (1720-1730)’, degree thesis, Università della Calabria, 2005; Coen,‘Caravaggio e alcuni caravaggeschi’; Coen, ‘I “quadrari” Giovanni Rumi’; Coen, ‘Agenti emediatori’; Coen, ‘Pier Leone Ghezzi mercante d’arte’; P. Coen, Il mercato dei quadri.

43. See Ford, James Byres. On Thomas Jenkins, a protagonist of the eighteenth-centuryRoman art market, see B. Ford, ‘Thomas Jenkins, Banker, Dealer and Unofficial English Agent’,Apollo 99 (1974), p.416-25; A. Busiri Vici, ‘Thomas Jenkins fra l’arte e l’antiquariato’, L’Urbe 48

(1985), p.157-65; G. Vaughan, ‘Jenkins, Thomas’, in The Dictionary of Art, vol. XVII.475; G.Vaughan, ‘Thomas Jenkins and his International Clientele’, in Antikensammlungen deseuropäischen Adels im 18. Jahrhundert als Ausdruck einer europäischen Identität, conferenceproceedings, Düsseldorf 1996, ed. D. Boschung (Mainz, 2000), p.20-30.

44. See I. Bignamini and I. Jenkins (eds), Grand Tour: The Lure of Italy in the XVIIIth Century,exh. cat. (London and Rome: Skira, 1996).

312 PAOLO COEN


45. G. Roversi, ‘Il commercio dei quadri a Bologna nel Settecento’, L’Archiginnasio 60 (1966),p.446-506; G. Roversi, ‘I trafficanti d’arte bolognesi del secolo XVIII e la vendita della MadonnaSistina di Raphael: I’, Culta Bononia 1 (1969), p.65-98; G. Perini, ‘La storiografia artistica aBologna e il collezionismo privato’, in Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Classe diLettere e Filosofia 11 (1981), p.221-9; B. Ghelfi (ed.), Il libro dei conti del Guercino, 1629-1666(Bologna: Nuova Alfa, 1997).

46. On the copies of the Boccapaduli Poussin, bought for 700 Roman scudi or ‘crowns’ fromDe Muynck in 1785 see P. Rosenberg, ‘Una esportazione fraudolenta nel XVIII secolo’, in Intornoa Poussin: dipinti romani a confronto, exh. cat., ed. C. Strinati and R. Vodret (Rome: L’Erma deBretschneider, 1994-5), p.29-36, and the entry by B. Contardi, p.80-91.

47. NLS, Byres-Moir MSS, ‘List of Byres’ goods left by his nephew Patrick Moir to the EnglishCollege in Rome’ (February 1805), fols. 3-5. See Coen, ‘L’attività di mercante’, appendix 6; P.Coen, Il mercato dei quadri, p.678.

48. Some years ago Brinsley Ford spotted in the catalogue of a book dealer a copy of FilippoTiti’s Studio di pittura, scultura e architettura that had once belonged to Byres, with handwrittennotes. He immediately telephoned, but the book had already been sold to a private customer. SeeBrinsley Ford Archive, The Paul Mellon Centre for the Studies on British Art, file ‘Byres, James’.I here wish to thank the staff at Paul Mellon’s, in particular its director, Brian Allen, and itsformer vice-director, Frank Salmon, for giving me the opportunity to consult Ford’s archive.

49. L. Schudt, Le guide di Roma (Vienna and Augsburg, 1930). For a reconsideration of thecultural value of these guides see J. Garms, ‘Introduzione’, in L. Schudt, Vedute di Roma dalMedioevo all’Ottocento, 2 vols (Naples, 1995), vol. I.10-17; Coen, ‘Le Magnificenze’, p.5 ff.

paolo coen is currently a ‘ricercatore’ at the University of Calabria, where he teaches History ofModern Art and Social History of Art. He has published on subjects ranging from fifteenth-century Milan to eighteenth-century Rome, his area of special expertise.



andrea casali and james byres: the mutual perception of the roman and british art markets in the...

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