Percorsi di arte e letteratura tra la Toscana e le Americhe

EARLY AMERICAN ARTISTS IN FLORENCE’S GALLERIA DEGLI UFFIZI, 1763-18601

SHEILA BARKER

In memory of Cynthia J. Mills (1947-2014)

In 1769, the Galleria delle Statue degli Uffizi (fig. 22) opened its doors to the world, becoming one of the first publicly accessible art galleries2. Over the following century, thousands of artists trekked to the Uffizi from every corner of Europe to copy its famous artworks3. In this period, the very same motive inspired over one hundred artists from North and South America (and by in large from the United States) to undertake the arduous and costly trans-Atlantic voyage that would bring them to the Uffizi4. For all these artists, the Florentine art gallery stood out as a

1 The research for this article was carried out during a post-doctoral fellowship from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and later with the generous support of the Jane Fortune Research Program on Women Artists. The author wishes to thank Simonetta Pasquinucci at the Archivio Storico degli Uffizi, the librarians of the National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum Library, and the staff of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz. 2 M. Filetti Mazza - B. Tomasello, La Galleria degli Uffizi 1758-1775. La politica museale di Raimondo Cocchi, Modena, 1999. The opening of the institution embodied the Enlightenment cultural politics of Tuscany’s foreign despot, Gran Duke Pietro Leopoldo (Peter Leopold Joseph Anton Joachim Pius Gotthard, later Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II, 1747-1792): it was a fraught nexus between progressive liberalism and monarchical absolutism. See e.g. V. Baldacci, Le riforme di Pietro Leopoldo e la nascita della Toscana moderna, Firenze, 2000; and M. Majone, Illuminismi e Risorgimenti, Roma, 2005.3 A. Floridia, Forestieri in Galleria: visitatori, direttori e custodi agli Uffizi dal 1769 al 1785, Firenze 2007.4 Carol Bradley, in her Copisti americani nelle gallerie fiorentine, in L’dea di Firenze: temi e interpretazioni nell’arte straniera dell’Ottocento, Atti del convegno (Firenze 1986), ed. by M. Bossi - L. Tonini, Firenze, 1989, pp. 61-66, made a few soundings of the Archivio Storico degli Uffizi in two categories of documents: the requests to copy artworks in the gallery, and the requests to export art from Tuscany. Bradley assembled the names of about 22 Americans, from Benjamin West to Thomas Cole. Her conclusion was that this archive deserved further exploration, and she expressed her hope that a more complete inventory would made of it one day. The present essay is an attempt to fill that gap. On American artists in Italy in general, see P.R. Baker, The Fortunate Pilgrims, Cambridge, MA, 1964; R. Soria, Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century American Artists in Italy, 1760 - 1914 , East Brunswick, NJ, 1982; and The Lure of Italy. American Artists and the Italian Experience 1760-1914, ed. by T.E. Stebbins, Boston and New York, 1992.

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crowning moment in their aesthetic pilgrimages to see first-hand the renowned works of the old masters 5.

Among the main benefits an artist gained from copying after European masterpieces were improved drawing and coloring skills, a more refined aesthetic taste, and enhanced cultural literacy. This wisdom was not lost on American artists: the South Carolina-born painter Washington Allston (1779-1843) proclaimed, «Ah, the old masters, after all, are the only masters to make a great artist»6. Yet for artists in the British colonies of North America, it had not been possible to gain this experience without going abroad, due to the utter dearth of original works by old masters in their homeland. For instance, the sole European painting that the indige­nous artist Benjamin West (1738-1820) is known to have seen during his youth in the province of Pennsylvania was a Spanish painting in the collection of Governor James Hamilton7. That painting, a portrait of Saint Ignatius attributed to the School of Murillo, had been found aboard a Spanish prize seized by the colonial regiment during the Caribbean War of Jenkins’s Ear (1739 – 1748). Only through serendipity and fortune had the painting reached Pennsylvania, and while its authorship may have been undistinguished, it nevertheless constituted a veritable academy of artistic training for a young artist with scanty access to European models.

Many Americans still considered themselves bereft of old masters a century later in 1855, when a writer for «The New York Weekly Tribune» maintained that there was not «a single [original] specimen of one of the great masters to be found in America»8, only inferior dross, copies, and fakes. The reason for this, according to the anonymous author, was that American art collectors lacked the ability to judge the authenticity and

5 On American artists’ production of copies while abroad, see T.E. Stebbins, American Painters and the Lure of Italy, in The Lure of Italy, pp. 36-38. See also W. Craven, The Grand Manner in Early Nineteenth-Century American Painting. Borrowings from Antiquity, the Renaissance, and the Baroque , «American Art Journal», XI, 2 (April 1979), pp. 2-43, p. 10 for John Trumbull’s copy after West after Correggio. Craven argued American interest in the Grand Manner was extinguished around 1825, yet the present study of the documents in the Uffizi archive shows that the number of American artists who copied at the Uffizi in 1763-1860 steadily increased throughout this period.6 Washington Allston to Charles Robert Leslie, Cambridgeport, 8 May 1822, quoted in N. Harris, The Artist in American Society: the Formative Years, 1790-1860, New York, 1966, p. 107.7 J. Galt, The Life of Benjamin West, facsimile reprint, intro. by N. Wright, Gainsville, 1960 [1816-1820], p. 71. The incident is also reported in the slightly later book by W. Dunlap, A History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States , 2 vols., New York, 1834, I, p. 44. 8 Picture Buying , «New York Weekly Tribune» (17 Feb. 1855), p. 3; later reprinted in «The Crayon», I (1855), 7, p. 4.

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quality of artworks, and as a consequence they often fell prey to unscrupulous dealers. Even Henry Tuckerman, an optimistic writer who hailed art’s «progress» in the New World in his 1867 The Book of the Artists, refrained from claiming that any original works by old masters might have reached the continent. Rather, he was content to boast that «American travelers in Europe have secured admirable copies» that ornamented those collections by which «our artists, without going abroad» became «familiar with the finest exemplars of the limner’s art»9.

Copies of European masterpieces had long enjoyed an avid market in the United States. In the colonial period, excellent copies were valued as emblems of taste and culture that confirmed their owners’ status as educated gentlemen while supposedly exerting a civilizing influence upon the American population10. During the successive Federal era, Americans emulated the British nobility’s prodigious collecting of old masterworks, but they almost always fell short of the mark, reaping only engravings or copies11. One such early American collector, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), made lists beginning in 1771 of the artworks he wished to assemble for a painting gallery in his Palladian-style villa of Monticello, and these lists show that he aimed at no higher goal than copies of famous master­pieces12. Even the mansion walls of the wealthy Boston Brahmins of Jack­sonian America were decorated mostly with copies13.

The scarce information we have regarding the collecting practices of early Americans suggests that these art buyers were exceptionally cultured, whether they were New England banking and shipping magnates or plan­tation owners from the South; moreover, a number of them, such as Bostonian Thomas Handasyd Perkins and South Carolinian Joseph Allen Smith Izard, conducted their purchases of paintings and plaster casts in the course of extensive travels in Europe14. By contrast, the nouveau-riche

9 H. Tuckerman, Book of the Artists. American Artist Life, New York, 186710 Stebbins, American Painters and the Lure of Italy, pp. 29-64; L.B. Miller, Patrons and Patriotism. The Encouragement of the Arts in the United States 1790-1860, Chicago and London, 1966, pp. 135-155.11 Emulation of the British elite by the moneyed American plantation owners is noted in J.T. Savage - R.A. Leath, Buying British. Merchants, Taste, and Charleston Consumerism, in In Pursuit of Refinement, pp. 55-64.12 A. Wallach, Cole, Byron and the Course of Empire, «The Art Bulletin», L (1968), 4, pp. 375-379: 377-378. 13 Miller, Patrons and Patriotism, p. 145. The Boston collectors of this period included Harrison Gray Otis, Peter Chardon Brooks and Israel Thorndike. In Baltimore there was Robert Gilmore.14 Miller, Patrons and Patriotism, p.145; on the Southern collectors and on Smith in particular, see M.D. McInnis, «Picture Mania». Collectors and Collecting in Charleston, in In Pursuit of Refinement. Charlestonians Abroad 1740-1860, ed. by M.D. McInnis, Columbia, 1999, pp. 39-53. William Allen (1700-1780), West’s patron, had been educated at Cambridge with Horace Mann (E.P. Richardson,

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Americans who had neither pursued a gentleman’s education nor experi­enced a Grand Tour found themselves disastrously unprepared for the challenge of collecting old masters, no matter how wealthy they might have been. The self-made merchant tycoon Luman Reed (1784-1836), a man of impeccable business savvy, was duped by New York art dealer Michael Paff into buying copies presented to him as original old master paintings15.

When private collecting failed to procure an artistic patrimony for the young nation, some began to clamor for public institutions to take on this role, particularly following the establishment of the National Gallery in London 182416. According to «The North American Review», a journal dedicated to fostering an American literary tradition, European old master art answered a dire necessity of American artists for excellent artistic models. Here it was posited that the dearth of European masterpieces in America had been detrimental for the nation’s artistic development:

«In this country we have but limited means of educating the eye and the taste to the just appreciation of the beautiful in art, as it has made itself familiar to all the cultivated classes in lands where centuries have been garnering up the tributes of generation upon generation. The great works of the great artists of the past may be said to be unknown among us. We educate ourselves upon what we find, and our standard becomes of course imperfect»17.

West’s Voyage to Italy, 1760, and William Allen , «The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography», LII (1978), pp. 3-26: 9). American Abolitionist and supporter of Italian Unification, Charles Sumner told his nephew in 1839 to read the five volumes of Luigi Lanzi’s Storia Pittorica during the sea voyage to Italy, and to visit collections of statues and paintings upon his arrival. Collector Robert Gilmor (1748-1822) had read Wincklemann, Gilpin, and Burke, and he studied the Old Masters in the De Vos collection in Amsterdam. A.W. Rutledge, Robert Gilmor Jr., Baltimore Collector, «Walters Art Gallery», XII (1949), pp. 19-39.15 Miller, Patrons and Painters, p. 152; W. Craven, Luman Reed, Patron. His Collection and Gallery, «American Art Journal», XII (1980), 2, pp. 40-59; E.M. Foshay, Luman Reed: New York Patron and His Picture Gallery, in Mr. Luman Reed’s Picture Gallery. A Pioneer Collection of American Art, ed. by E.M. Foshay, New York, 1990, pp. 22-45.16 Proponents for a public American art gallery include Henry Tuckerman; see Tuckerman, Book of the Artists. Also on this topic, A. Wallach, Long-term Visions, Short-term Failures: Art Institutions in the United States, 1800-1860, in Art in Bourgeois Society, 1790-1850, ed. by A. Hemingway - W. Vaughan, Cambridge, 1998, pp. 297-312.17 The Allston Exhibition, «The North American Review», L (1840), 107, pp. 358-381.

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This same argument reappears in a letter of 1845 written by an American artist, John Kerrick, who was petitioning to copy Titian’s Venus of Urbino at the Uffizi Gallery. Kerrick insinuated his copies would refine and elevate the cultural life in his homeland:

«And for the benefit to myself, and to those who will see the copy if I make one, it will be very much greater than if I were to reside in Europe, where the works of the great masters abound. In America wealth has but recently begun to increase rapidly, and there has not been the means, perhaps not the taste, to purchase works of the old Masters; and American artists have no pictures to guide them, save the copies they make them­selves during their residence abroad. The American public also has scarcely even an opportunity to see an original work of any of the great artists of Italy. While we remain in so poor a condition, a copy of this most beau­tiful work of Titian, if tolerably well done, couldn’t but be beneficial to the taste of the artists who may see it, and the public»18.

Kerrick’s letter argues that the works carried home by American copyists provided an aesthetic education to both artists and the public in general. From his point of view, copies served as agents of civilization in the New World, which was still perceived as financially and culturally inferior to the Old one.

Such endorsements for old master art were countered by a swelling chorus of isolationist rhetoric19. According to architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe in 1811, «Our national prejudices are unfavorable to the fine arts. Many of our citizens who do not fear that they will enervate our minds and corrupt the simple and republican character of our pursuits and enjoyments, consider the actual state of society as unfit for their introduc­tion; more dread a high grade of perfection in the fine arts as the certain indication of the loss of political liberty, and of the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few»20. In later decades, anti-Roman­ists led the opposition, casting suspicion on the Catholic subject matter and ecclesiastical patronage typical of old master art. Epitomizing this

18 Letter of John Kerrick to Marchese del Monte, dated 9 September 1845, ASGF, ASU, 69, part 2 (1846), tab 50.19 They are rare if we set aside the self-serving arguments made by dealers like James Jackson Jarves who bemoaned America’s want of old masters while attempting sell his European paintings to U.S. institutions.20 J.C. Taylor, America as Symbol, in America as Art, exh. cat., ed. by J.C. Taylor, Washington, 1976, pp. 1-36: 16-17.

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group, Roswell Willson Haskins in 1851 denounced the old masters as slaves of «papal power» and demonized their art as an instrument designed to «inculcate the particular interpretation of the Church»21.

Soon, public forums resounded with arguments that European art would corrupt America’s indigenous art if steps were not taken to emanci­pate American artists from its influence. In this vein of argumentation, direct observation of New World wilderness was proposed as a valid replacement for the technical and aesthetic lessons embodied in Europe’s masterworks:

«Art is not to be carried to America at all, but if genuine, must spring up in it, fed by the manifestations of Beauty in Nature itself […]. We do not believe that all the pictures in Europe ever made an artist one whit greater […] while they have enabled many little men to shine in borrowed great­ness, they have dragged down true greatness in the degree in which they have captivated it. The study of the grand galleries has made shallow critics and mannered artists, and will always do so»22.

Conflating politics with aesthetics, proponents of cultural isolation claimed that the art of a republic like the U.S. was manifestly superior to the art of societies subjected to tyranny23. This radical position seemingly relegated old master art, as well as copies of it, to an inferior position with respect to art produced in the U.S. without regard to European models and traditions.

Ironically, those who declared American artists ought to depict only «American prospects and American skies» contradicted their own isola­tionist mandate when they articulated their aspirations for American painting. Academician Richard Ray, for instance, ushered in the ascen­dancy of New World artists by invoking the European old masters that Americans admired most: «Let the new Titian touch his pencil on the Catskill mount; or let him, another Claude Lorrain, looking upon its laughing scenes of plenty, shed on them the same delicious repose and

21 R.W. Haskins, Art and Artists, Buffalo, 1851, pp. 7, 33, 37-38.22 Anonymous review of J.J. Jarves’s 1855 Art-hints, «The Crayon», II (1855), 7, p. 101.23 R. Ray, An Address Delivered before the American Academy of the Fine Arts, November 17, 1825 , New York, 1825, pp. 12-14, 41-42. Ironically, William Dunlap, although he urged American artists to diverge from the old master tradition, gained the nickname «the American Vasari» for his achievements as an artist-biographer. M. Lyons, William Dunlap and the Construction of an American Art History, Amherst - Boston, 2005, pp. 47-54.

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serenity which have been claimed for Italy alone»24. The United States may have desired a great art tradition all its own, but it could not envision such a tradition without making reference to the European model.

While the newspapers, journals, and academy halls reverberated with debates regarding the creation of a public collection of old masters in the U.S., American artists in the meantime were traveling in ever greater numbers to Europe in order to see for themselves the continental artistic tradition. Many of these artists visited Florence’s Uffizi Gallery for this purpose, encouraged by the relative ease of obtaining permission to copy here. A complete survey of all the letters written to request this permis­sion between 1763 and 1860 reveals that 135 artists from the American hemisphere came to study old master art at the Uffizi (see Appendix 1 for an alphabetical list and the dates of their requests). Each of those artists wrote one or more letters to the director of the gallery, sometimes speci­fying their profession, the works they wished to paint or draw, the amount of time needed to carry out the work, a name of a local person who could vouch for them (such as a banker, art professor, resident artist, or land­lord), and an address.

Not all the artists from the American hemisphere were from the United States. Four artists arrived from Canada (Napoléon Bourassa, Antoine-Sébastien Falardeau, Théophile Hamel, and Stuart Westmacott); three from Mexico (Salomé Pirra, Primitivo Veranda, and Ignacio Vásquez); one from Peru (Francisco Laso); one from Brazil (G. de Ferreira); and one from Argentina (Martín León Boneo). Moreover, seven of the American artists were women, all apparently U.S. nationals25. In the chronological order of their arrival, these pioneering American women were Sarah W. Lippitt (1837), Mrs. Ward (1841), Mrs. Albert Dabadie Bach (1844), Sophie West (1847), Lydia Edgar (1854), Anna Eliot Ticknor (1856), and Miss Guild (1856). Ticknor (1823-1896), who would go on to found the Society to Encourage Studies at Home to enhance women’s access to education, travelled in the company of a certain Miss Guild who, like Mrs. Ward, is still awaiting complete identification. Many of the American artists who studied in the Uffizi were later able to find work in such

24 Ray, An Address, pp. 31-32.25 On the women artists, including the American ones, who worked in the Uffizi in these years, see S. Barker, The Female Artist in the Public Eye: Women Copyists at the Uffizi, 1770-1859, in Women, Femininity and Public Space in European Visual Culture, 1789-1914 , ed. by T. Balducci - H.B. Jensen, Farnham, 2014, pp. 65-79.

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important artistic centers as London or Paris, and most all of them bene­fitted from enhanced prestige and cultural standing when they returned home.

Benjamin West (1738-1820) (fig. 23) could be considered the first Amer­ican artist to have painted copies in the Uffizi, even though his visit preceded both the American War of Independence as well as the transfor­mation of the Uffizi into a gallery accessible to the public. West’s travels in Europe, which commenced in 1760, were underwritten by two patrons from the Pennsylvania Colony, William Allen and James Hamilton, who arranged for repayment in the form of old master paintings26. His specific choice of the Uffizi as a base for his artistic studies, however, can be cred ­ited to German painter Anton Raphael Mengs, whom West met upon reaching Rome.

In the Uffizi, West copied Titian’s Venus of Urbino, probably selected at the behest of his learned patrons27. The making of this copy consumed many months, and on top of this, his progress was interrupted by a fire that broke out in the gallery28. The choice of Titian’s renowned portrayal of Venus in a domestic interior seems to indicate a predilection for Vene­tian masters of colore, a term meaning the technique of paint application. Copying Titian’s Venus of Urbino additionally afforded the American artist a precious opportunity to study the female nude. When West sent his completed copies to Governor Hamilton, it is notable that he implored his patron to forbid other artists from replicating his copies29. In this way,

26 Richardson, West’s Voyage, pp. 10, 16. A. Staley, Benjamin West in Italy, in The Italian Presence in American Art, 1760-1860, ed. by I.B. Jaffe, New York, 1989, pp.1-8: 2-3.27 Richardson, West’s Voyage; and R.C. Alberts, Benjamin West. A Biography, Boston, 1978, pp. 26, 47-50. In 1762, West received news that his Roman copies had been hung in Governor Hamilton’s house; Allens and Hamilton at this time commissioned more copies, including Guido Reni’s St. Michael, but West complained that the prices they offered were too small given the size of the painting. He copied Titian’s Venus of Urbino for William Allen, as well as a Pietà attributed to Annibale Carracci in Palazzo Corsini. He started to copy Correggio’s St. Jerome and the Holy Family, which is in Parma, but did not finish.28 On 7 January 1763, West inquired about the extending of his privileges with the gallery’s chief officer, or guardarobiero maggiore : «Signore Giuseppe; Avendo tempo fà accordato la permissione al West Pittore Inglese di copiare la Venere di Tiziano, e non avendola potuta terminare in quel tempo, gli darebe adesso tutto il comodo per ultimare un tal lavoro, non avendo difficoltà il pittor Briglia che attualmente la copia, di dargli il suo luogo, e resto di casa 7 gennaio 1763 Vostro Eccelentissimo Riccardini Guardarobiero Maggiore» Archivio Storico delle Gallerie Fiorentine (henceforth ASGF), Archivio Storico degli Uffizi (henceforth ASU), 1 (1738-1768).29 «I took the liberty to desire Mr. Rutherford to recommend that no copies be taken of them by anybody», in the letter of Benjamin West to Joseph Shippen dated 11 May 1762, in Richardson, West’s Voyage, p. 17. Nevertheless, John Trumbull (1756-1843) was granted access to the copy of Correggio’s Holy Family with Saint Jerome that West had made in Parma. Trumbull’s copy is illustrated

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West was guarding his special status as the sole American artist capable of producing replicas of these old master pictures.

For early American artists traveling in Europe, the contact with original works of the great masters made a decisive impact upon their stylistic development. One artist who especially succombed to this influence is Henry Benbridge, born in Philadelphia in 174330. In 1769 he was in Florence, where the grand duke’s secretary described Benbridge as «Inglese, Dilettante di Pittura e Disegno» when handling his request to copy the Uffizi’s collection of old masters’ self-portraits 31. He later worked as a portraitist in North Carolina and Virginia, employing a tene­brist palette influenced by the Baroque-era paintings he had studied in Italy 32. The perception that Benbridge painted like the European old masters rather than his homebound American colleagues persisted even into the early twentieth century, when Charles Henry Hart classified Benbridge with the «late Italian school» rather than with the American one33.

After the War of Independence (1775-1783), Americans arrived at the Uffizi under a variety of guises. In 1777, James Smith, when requesting to copy Correggio, defined himself as a «pittore Anglo-Americano»34. He returned a decade later identifying himself as a «pittore inglese», which could indicate that, although born in the British colonies, he was a loyalist who had modified his national identity while living abroad. Smith is notable for another reason as well: despite his colonial American upbringing, his artistic taste embraced a remarkable variety of old masters. While in Florence, he copied after not only Correggio, Rubens, and Van Dyck, but also Caravaggio, who was largely out of favor at that time35.

as fig. 4 in Stebbins, American Painters and the Lure of Italy, p.4.30 W. Roberts - C.H. Hart, An Early American Artist: Henry Benbridge, «Art in America», VI (1918), pp. 96-101. Benbridge studied art in Italy from 1765 until 1769; his notebook of sketches executed while abroad is in the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, SC.31 Letter of Henry Benbridge to Giuseppe Querci, dated 1 August 1769, ASGF, ASU, 2 (1769-1770). In addition to copying old masters, Benbridge also studied under contemporary painters Pompeo Batoni and Anton Raphael Mengs in Italy. See Dunlap, A History of the Rise and Progress, I, p. 143.32 Charles Fraser (1782-1860), for instance, objected to Benbridge’s characteristic tenebrism: «His shadows were dark and opaque and more suitable to the historical style». See Dunlap, A History of the Rise and Progress, I, p. 143.33 C.H. Hart, The Gordon Family: Painted by Henry Benbridge, «Art in America», VI (1918), pp. 191-200.34 Letter of James Smith to Giuseppe Pelli-Bencivenni, dated 20 October 1777, ASGF, ASU, 10 (1777), tab 89. 35 Ibid., tab 105. Fraser was the only American painter in this entire period to copy the work of Caravaggio, a painter largely marginalized by Enlightenment-era critical canons of art.

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The sporadic visits of American artists to the Uffizi ceased entirely during the Napoleonic Wars due to the danger of crossing the Atlantic. Only in 1817 did an American artist reappear; this was William Main, a young art student who traveled to Europe in the company of his Italian art-instructor, Mauro Gandolfi, a Bolognese engraver. Yet, as soon as the traveling party reached Florence, Gandolfi disappeared with his cash advance, abandoning his young American charge to his own devices36. Left on his own, Main wrote to the director of the Uffizi for permission to draw after the Madonna Addolorata attributed to Guido Reni37. Later he studied engraving under Raffaello Morghen at Florence’s Accademia delle Belle Arti; then, following upon his return to New York, he pursued a career as an illustrator and was one of the original members of the National Academy of Design38.

Beginning in the 1830s, American artists copied at the Uffizi with greater regularity, often in the company of colleagues or family members. William Edward West, who first arrived at the Uffizi in 1824 wishing to copy self-portraits by Rembrandt, Titian, Tintoretto and Raphael, along with Titian’s Flora, had been born in 1788 in Lexington, Kentucky39. Most likely, he developed an interest in studying abroad during his apprentice­ship with Thomas Sully in Philadelphia in 1807-1810, when he also learned French40. Upon reaching Florence, the Kentuckian integrated remarkably well into society, living in Borgo Santi Apostoli near the English colony, enrolling in the Accademia delle Belle Arti, and making a positive impression upon Lord Byron, whose final portrait West rendered in July of 182241.

36 M. Cazort, Mauro in America. An Italian Artist Visits the New World , New Haven and London, 2003: During his European travels, Main’s patron sent him a stipend of one dollar per day for three years, and gave additional money to Gandolfi to provide art lessons to Main throughout this period.37 Letter of William Main to Giovanni degli Alessandri, dated 23 October 1817, ASGF, ASU, 41 (1817).38 Soria, Dictionary, p. 195.39 These copies are indicated in the letters of William Edward West to Giovanni degli Alessandri, dated 6 July, 10 July, 16 July, and 16 August 1824, ASGF, ASU, 48 (1824), tab 37. West also made a copy of Mariotto Albertinelli’s Annunciation in 1823; see West’s request for an export license, dated 23 October 1823, ASGF, ASU, 47 (1823), tab 45. 40 For the artist’s biography, see E.C. Pennington, William Edward West, 1788-1857, Washington, DC, 1985; and Soria, Dictionary, pp. 321-22.41 Stebbins, The Lure of Italy, p. 328. Specifically on the portrait of Lord Byron, E.C. Pennington, Painting Lord Byron. An Account by William Edward West, «Archives of American Art Journal», XXIV (1984), 2, pp. 16-21.

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In the case of William Edward West and many others like him, an artist’s introduction to the practice of making copies at the Uffizi was often insti ­gated by a friendship with a co-national who was already in the habit of working there, and who could serve as a guide. West made his first request to study at the Uffizi on the very day - 6 July 1824 - that a request was lodged by another American, Thomas McClelland, who had already been studying there for months and who surely lent assistance to his compa­triot42. After acquiring some experience under his own belt, the Kentuckian took his turn at playing Virgil to an American initiate, George Esten Cooke of Maryland (1793-1849), on 25 October 182643. All three men were mentioned in a single letter of 1829 by Horatio Greenough (1807-1883), an American sculptor who also copied at the Uffizi44; this circumstance both confirms the tendency of American artists to form bonds during their journeys abroad, and also suggests that they worked side by side when copying at the Uffizi.

Notably, when William Edward West returned to Europe in 1847, he introduced yet another American artist to the practice of studying at the Uffizi: his 22-year-old daughter, Sophie West:

42 See Thomas McClelland’s letters of 4 July and 18 August 1823 in ASGF, ASU, 47 (1823), tab 44; and McClelland’s letters of 21 April, 6 June, 3 July, and July 6 1824 in ASGF, ASU, 48 (1824), tab 37. McClelland, a portraitist active in New York c. 1820, was last mentioned in 1829.43 See the letters of William Edward West and George Esten Cooke to Giovanni degli Alessandri, both dated 25 October, 1826, ASGF, ASU, 50, part 2 (1826). West made a successive request on 27 November 1826; Cooke made new requests on 25 November and 26 December 1826 (ASGF, ASU, 50, part 2 [1826]), as well as 10 more requests in the following year, 1827 (ASGF, ASU, 51 part 2 [1827], tab 52). In a letter of Cooke’s to Alessandri on 25 July 1829 (ASGF, ASU, 52 part 2 [1829], tab 50), he refers to himself as a «nativo di Virginia», not Maryland.44 Letter of Horatio Greenough to Robert Weir, dated Florence, 7 March 1829, published in N. Wright, An Unpublished Letter from Horatio Greenough, «Archives of American Art», XXIV (1984), 1, pp. 20-22. McClellan is noted on p. 22; Cooke, noted on p. 21 as «Cook» who «has been giving his soirées this winter», was not identified by Wright, and here is connected with this letter for the first time. He was in Florence in 1826, then stayed in Rome several years, and returned to Florence 1829-1830. See Soria, Dictionary, p. 94 Greenough’s own petition to copy at the Uffizi states, «Eccellenza, Enrico Greenaugh nativo di Boston, Stati Uniti d’America, pittore, essendo desideroso di copiare un ritratto del Giorgione, esistente nella stanza Veneziana e marcato ____ prega umilmente V. Eccellenza il permesso per un mese. Che della grazia etc. Enrico Greenaugh». Letter of Horatio Greenough to Antonio Ramirez de Montalvo, dated Florence, 25 July 1832, ASGF, ASU, 64, part 2 (1832), tab 36.

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«Il nostro amico Sig. Giuseppe West, unitamente alla di Lui Figlia, desider­anno di far’ qualche copia di quadri esistenti nella Reale Galleria. Noi faremo all’ Eccelenza Vostra molto tenuti se vorrà accordare al Sig. West, e Sua Figlia questa permissione ringraziamente, e pigliamo all’onore di segnarci Devotissimo Servitore Blowden S. French»45.

Born during her father’s artistic study in Paris, Sophie West (1825-1914) went on to have a career as a landscape painter in Pennsylvania46.

West was not the only American to introduce his child to the treasures of the Uffizi. Portraitist Rembrandt Peale (1778-1860) brought his son Michael Angelo (1814-1833) to paint with him after the old masters on 13 July 182947. We can gather why he did so from a letter written in 1828, in which Rembrandt told a friend that while he aspired to refine his own «taste and judgment» with his journey to Europe, his «chief duty» was to give his son Michael Angelo an education48. While the father copied portraits and devotional icons in the Uffizi over the next months, the son busied himself with copying other paintings. Expressing himself in perfect French, Michael Angelo requested to copy after artists such as Gagnereaux, Vernet, Jean Miel, Albert Everdingen, and Salvator Rosa, manifesting a decisive predilection for landscapes, and in doing so, devi­ating from the family practice of portraiture49.

45 Letter of Blowden S. French to the Marchese del Monte, 9 September 1847, ASGF, ASU, 71, part 2 (1847), tab 60.46 Obituary of S. West, «Harrisburg Telegraph», 13 May 1914. She is also named in The New York Historical Society’s Dictionary of Artists in America, ed. by G.C. Groce - D.C. Wallace, New Haven, 1957, sub vocem.47 Letter of Rembrandt Peale to Giovanni degli Alessandri, ASGF, ASU, 53, part 2 (1829), tab 47. Some of the copies Peale made in Florence have been detected in the sale of his studio contents; see J.A. Mahey, The Studio of Rembrandt Peale, «American Art Journal», I (1969), 2, pp. 20-40: 23: «In the list of the auction of his studio contents there is at no. 64 a Head of Judith, from the painting by [Alessandro Allori, called] Bronzino, in the Gallery at Florence, $30.00 Wilson [purchaser] … This was one of a number of copies made by Peale during his journey to Italy in 1829-30. It was first exhibited at the Sully& Earle Gallery in Philadelphia in the spring of 1831 … Madonna, varied from an Italian picture, 110.00, Divine [nickname for Guido Reni] … While in Italy in 1830, Peale had made a copy of Raphael’s Madonna della Seggiola. This copy (private collection, N.J) was exhibited at the Sully & Earle Gallery in Philadelphia in 1831. The painting remaining in the artist’s studio may have been a variation on the same design». The last painting, Peale’s copy after a Raphael painting in Palazzo Pitti in Florence, is illustrated and described in Stebbins, The Lure of Italy, pp. 162-163, cat. no. 6.48 Cited in C.E. Hevner, Rembrandt Peale’s Dream and Experience of Italy, in The Italian Presence in American Art, ed. by I.B. Jaffe, New York, 1989, pp. 9-25: 9.49 Letters of (Michael) Angelo Peale to Giovanni degli Alessandri dated 22 July, 4 August, 22 August, 10 September, 30 September, 1 October, 7 October, 22 October, and 17 December 1829, ASGF, ASU, 53 part 2 (1829), tab 47. Mahey, The Studio, p. 22, notes with surprise the «large group of landscapes, both sketches and finished oils» among the remains of Rembrandt Peale’s studio at

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The interest in landscape demonstrated by the children of West and Peale reflects the new hegemony of the landscape genre in Jacksonian America thanks to its exaltation in the hands of the Hudson River School painters. It is noteworthy that two of the greatest apostles of this self-pro­claimed «American» landscape school had paid homage to the old masters by copying at the Uffizi. The first was Thomas Cole (1801-1848) who, along with Horatio Greenough (1805-1852), was sent to Tuscany by Robert Gilmor of Baltimore to buy art for his collection and to provide Gilmor with copies of old master paintings50. Cole seems to have used the opportunity of studying in the Uffizi primarily as a means of gathering a repertoire of figural motifs for staffing his landscapes (fig. 24). He reque­sted to make sketches in the galleries for two months on 15 August 1831:

«Eccellenza, Desideroso di fare alcuni abozzetti dei certi quadri e statue nelli corridori nel tribuno anche (se sarebbe permesso) nella scuola Vene­ziano [sic], supplico la bontà del’Eccellenza Sua a compiacerse d’accor­darmi la la permissione per due mesi. Sono intanto rispettosamente del Eccellenza Sua Divotissimo Servitore Thomas Cole. [Countersigned] Giacomo Ombrosi Console nominato dal Governo degli Stati Uniti di America[Approved by the Uffizi’s director on 28 August:] Accordasi di prendere ricordi a matita dai monumenti dei corridori, e delle stanze quadrate. A R di Montalto. Buono per 2 mesi» 51.

The other great representative of the Hudson River School to study in the Uffizi, Asher B. Durand, focused on Flemish genre scenes, Raphael’s Madonna del Cardellino, and sketching52. Neither of these renowned American landscape specialists made copies after the Uffizi’s old master landscapes.

his death, asking rhetorically «Who has ever thought of Peale as a landscapist?». Based on the letters at the Uffizi, there is basis for supposing those landscape paintings in the elder Peale’s studio to have been painted by Michael Angelo.50 Baker, The Fortunate Pilgrims, p. 138. This purpose is confirmed by the records of 30 January and 24 September 1832 in the Uffizi archive (ASGF, ASU, 56, tab 34), that Cole exported 37 pictures in 1832, including 11 landscapes, as well as additional studies; see Bradley, Copisti americani, p. 65. Gilmore valued Greenough and Cole as art agents for their loyalty, their ability to buy works directly from the private owners, and their skill in judging the quality of art. See Greenough’s letters to Gilmor of 17 may 1828 and 25 February 1829 in N. Wright, Letters of Horatio Greenough, American Sculptor, Madison, 1972, pp. 15, 25.51 Letter of Cole to Antonio Ramirez di Montalvo, ASGF, ASU, 55, part 2 (1831), tab 44.52 Letters of Durand to Antonio Ramirez di Montalvo, dated 7 November 1840, and (with name of John William Casilear crossed out and replaced with Durand’s) 7 (sic) November 1840: ASGF, ASU, 64, part 2 (1840), and 21 April 1841, ASGF, ASU, 82, part 2 (1841), tab 48.

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Thomas Cole’s request to copy at the Uffizi, like those of many other American artists, was countersigned by Jacomo Ombrosi. Tuscan by birth, Ombrosi in 1819 became the first Consul of the United States in Tuscany53. In this role, Ombrosi had helped American artists to gain permission to copy at the Uffizi, to export their artworks, and to obtain introductions to the Florentine Academy’s art professors. Although gener­ally facilitating these Americans’ stays in Florence, Ombrosi was not universally liked, and one America artist, Robert Weir, characterized him as «fawning, subtle, and vindictive»54. Indicative of the power Ombrosi had acquired through backchannels and influence peddling, he managed to continue issuing official letters in the name after being disavowed in 1834 by U.S. President Andrew Jackson and being dismissed from his consular position by the Tuscan grand duke. Ombrosi’s legacy contributed to the unfortunate reputation of America’s consuls in Italy as unprincipled art swindlers who persuaded American collectors to purchase «a lot of wretched caricatures, or copies»55.

Jacomo Ombrosi’s recommendation was not the only means of gaining access to the Uffizi. A few artists found an alternative in the figure of Bostonian sculptor Horatio Greenough, who had studied under Lorenzo Bartolini in Florence beginning in 1828 and then gone on to open his own studio in Via Sangallo in 1843. However, it was another prominent Amer­ican sculptor, Hiram Powers, who appeared most often (after Ombrosi) as the countersigner on American artists’ letters to the Uffizi. Hiram Powers arrived in Florence in 1837 and was «the nucleus around which American society revolved» according to historian Paul Baker56. The transition from newcomer to pillar of the local community happened very quickly; within just three years of landing in Italy he countersigned his first of many peti ­tions, that of Thomas Burton, a resident of London’s Royal Academy of Arts, on 1 June 1840:

53 On Ombrosi and the Americans, see J.F. McGuigan, Jr., Fortunate Associations: The American Painter Amasa Hewins (1795-1855) and Florence, in The Proceedings of The City and the Book 5th International Conference: The Americans in Florence’s English Cemetery, II, 11 October 2008 (www.florin.ms).54 Dunlap, History of the Rise and Progress, II, p. 390, cited in McGuigan Jr., Fortunate Associations.55 [N. a.], Picture buying , reprinted from the «Tribune» in «The Crayon», I (1855), 7, p. 4.56 Baker, The Fortunate Pilgrims, p. 56. On Powers’ period in Italy, see also Stebbins, The Lure of Italy, pp. 339-343. On Powers’ life, R.P. Wunder, Hiram Powers, Vermont Sculptor, Newark, 1991.

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«Having been informed, that the name of some person known to the President of the Gallery, is necessary, in order to secure the privilege of copying pictures, to a stranger in Florence, I, with much pleasure, subjoin my own, with the hope that it will prove acceptable, Very Respectfully et c. Hiram Powers, In via S. Niccolò no. 1372»57.

Around the time of Ombrosi’s death in 1852, Bostonian painter Amasa Hewins (1795-1855) was nominated Commercial Agent in his place. Seeing the potential for profit in this position, Hewins facilitated the export of over 2,600 pre-modern works of art (mostly paintings) from Tuscany to the U.S., receiving a fee for each item he processed 58. By this time, however, American attitudes towards copies had begun to change in response to some interrelated circumstances: the momentum of a nation­alistic ideology of art that associated American values with specifically American visual culture; marketing developments like traveling exhibitions and subscription engravings that enabled artists to profit from low-brow, popular audiences rather than elite patrons; and a rising suspicion of copies, perceived as a sort of art-fraud committed against ignorant purchasers.

Florence’s role as the foremost outpost for ambitious American artists was over by the time the U.S. emerged from its Civil War; this was because as the nineteenth century progressed, France’s revolutionary cultural modernism overturned nearly all the tenets of the classical tradition and made Paris the undisputed artistic capital of Europe. All too soon, it was forgotten that the Uffizi’s accessible collection of old master paintings had played a vital role both in establishing New World artists as cultivated, authoritative practitioners in their native lands, and in bringing them into dialogue with their European peers by means of a shared artistic tradition that spanned time and the Atlantic alike.

57 Letter of Thomas Burton to Antonio Ramirez de Montalvo, ASGF, ASU, 64, part 2 (1840).58 See Bradley, Copisti americani, pp. 64 and 66, who remarked on the basis of the export records of an astonishing total of 2,600 paintings under his name between 1851-1853: «sembra piuttosto che Hewins sia diventato un commerciante alquanto intraprendente». On Hewins see Soria, Dictionary, p. 161; and McGuigan Jr., Fortunate Associations.

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Agate, Frederick Styles 1834Alexander, Charles 1851-1852Ames, Joseph A. 1848Bache, Mrs. Albert Dabadie 1844Baker/Basker, George A. 1844Beck, Julius Augustus 1854Benbridge, Henry 1769Bogle, Robert 1846-1847Bond, Charles V. 1847Boneo, Martín León 1859 (Argentina)Bourassa, Napoléon 1852 (Canada)Bowers, Edward 1847Bronson (Dr.) 1827Brown, George Loring 1841-1844Brown, Henry K. 1843Brown, John Henry 1841-1842Brown, Mannevillette E.D. 1839Bryant, William Cullen 1834Bujac, Alfred 1845Cameron, James 1845-1848Carlton, William T 1838–1839Casilear, John William 1840Chambers, William B 1843Chapman, John Gadsby 1829-1850Cheney, Seth W. 1844Cole, Thomas 1831Cooke, George Esten 1826-1829Cornwall, E. P. 1854Cranch, John 1831-1834Darley, Henry J. 1827Darley, William H. 1827de Ferreira, G. 1852 (Brazil)Deveaux/Deveraux, James 1841-1842Durand, Asher B. 1840Edgar, Lydia 1854-1860Edmonds, Francis William 1841Edouard, Alexander 1847Edwards, Thomas 1855-1856Falardeau, Antoine-Sébastien 1847 (Canada)Fink, Frederick 1842 Fisher, John Kerrick 1845-1846Frazier/Frazer, Oliver 1834Freeman, James Edward 1837-1845Gay, William A. 1850Gerry, Samuel L. 1850Gould, Walter G. 1850Gray, Henry Peters 1845Greenough, Henry 1832Greenough, Horatio 1838Guild (Miss) 1856Habersham, Richard West 1833Hall, George H. 1852

Hamel, Théophile 1846 (Canada)Harding, Horace 1850-1851Hart, Benjamin 1859Hart, Joel T. 1855Haseltine, Frank 1853Healy, George P. A. 1835Hewins, Amasa 1831-1832Hick, Thomas 1847Hoe, Hector G. 1856Hoit, Albert G. 1843-1844Huntington, Daniel P. 1844Kellog, Miner K. 1841Kennedy, Theodore 1841Lawrence, Samuel 1839Laso, Francisco 1847 (Peru)Lawrie/Laurie, Alexander 1856Lippitt, Sarah W. 1837Loop, Henry A. 1857Lulow/Ludlow, C. 1855Main, William 1817McClelland, Thomas 1823-1825Macoughtry, James W. 1833-1834Miller, Alfred Jacob 1834Miranda, Primitivo 1845 (Mexico)Morse, Alpheus Carey 1843 Morse, Samuel F. B. 1831 Murray, Arthur 1846Murray, George J. 1846Nichols, Abel 1841-1852Nichols, Charles 1857Page, William 1850-1852Pattison, Robert J. 1853Peale, Michael Angelo 1829Peale, Rembrant 1829 Perkins, Charles C, 1845-1857Peticolas, Edward F. 1818Philip, William H. 1854Phillips William H. 1846Pirra, Salomé 1859 (Mexico)Plummer, Harrison L. 1852Pope, John 1851Powell, William Henry 1844Powers, Alenson/Alanson G. 1855Powers, Hiram 1849Reding, William H. 1847Reid, John 1853Ritchie, Andrew Jr. 1832-1833Rogers, Randolph J. 1849Rood, Ogden 1857Rossiter, Thomas Pritchard 1842Ruckle, Thomas C. 1837Russell, Moses B. 1852-1854

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Sanders, John R. 1851Sanders/Saunders, William C. 1844-1845Smith, Joseph Allen 1777-1787Strother, David Hunter 1842-1843Southward, George 1848Tait, James 1844-1854Terry, Luther 1839-1841Thompson, Cephas G. 1853Ticknor, Anna Eliot 1856Tiffany, William Shaw 1847-1849Tilton, John R. 1852Torrey, Joseph 1829Vasquez, Ignacio 1829 (Mexico)Vedder, Elihu 1857Wall, William Allen 1833

Walker, Samuel Swan 1831Ward (Mrs.) 1841Watson, Stewart 1839West, Benjamin 1763West, Sophie 1847West, William Edward 1825-1826, 1847Westmacott, Stuart 1839-1849 (Canada)White, Edwin D. 1852-1853Wight, Moses 1850-1852Wilde, Hamilton G. 1850Willard, Henry 1846Wilson, Buckingham 1855Wood, William F. 1844Wotherspoon, William W. 1849-1850

22. A. Hewins, The Tribuna of the Uffizi, 1830-1833, oil on canvas, 63.5 x 86.4. Boston, The Boston Museum of Fine Arts (gift of the family of the artist).

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23. B. West, Self-Portrait, 1770-1776 ca., oil on canvas, 76.8 x 63.8. Baltimore, The Baltimore Museum of Art (gift of Dr. Morton K. Blaustein, Barbara B. Hirschhorn, and Elizabeth B.

Roswell, in Memory of Jacob and Hilda K. Blaustein).

24. T. Cole, View of Florence from San Miniato, 1837, oil on canvas, 99.5 x 160.4. Cleveland, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund.

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