Le goût anglais pour les arts vénitiens dans les Crudities de Thomas Coryate : spécificités de la curiosité dans l’Angleterre de la première modernité à l’aube du Grand Tour

• Main Author: Anne Geoffroy
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Maison de la Recherche en Sciences Humaines 2015-07-01
• Series: Revue LISA
• Subjects: Thomas Coryate; Venice; art; Wotton Henry; text/image relationships; travel writing
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/lisa/8676

While British curiosity for Italian arts was stifled during the post-Reformation period, there was a renewed interest in this field under James I’s reign. This paper explores the prominent features of British curiosity for Venetian art as exemplified in Thomas Coryate’s Crudities (1611). Beyond the traveller’s learned account of the city, his personal comments testify to the radically new world he discovers. Although the evident willingness for comprehensiveness sometimes turns the narrative into a tedious collection of architectural and pictorial data, attempts at analysis crop up however, shedding light on the way novelty is apprehended. Studying Coryate’s early modern response to art will also reveal to what extent the interpretation of images may lead to misreadings. Finally, the crucial role played by Henry Wotton – the English ambassador to Venice at the time – will be examined from the perspective of cultural and artistic transmission.