Art and archaeology were central to a Grand Tourist’s pursuit of education, cultivation and leisure. For the erudite tourist who had studied the Classics and was familiar with Italian history, the Grand Tour was an experience of recognition as much as discovery. Encountering cultural artefacts in-situ, afforded tourists the opportunity to become familiar with antiquity and its modes of display, and to be seen doing so by their countrymen.
With the publication of History of Ancient Art in 1763-64, German-born, Rome-based art historian and antiquarian Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-68) established his reputation as the eighteenth century’s leading authority on Classical Greek and Neoclassical Roman art, and the go-to guide for well-connected tourists. In constructing a methodology for analysing and synthesising recurring stylistic characteristics found across time and cultures, Winckelmann developed the framework for a modern art history that influenced how art was viewed, read, valued and collected during the Grand Tour.
The introduction of art history as an academic discipline, was formative on the widespread establishment of public and national art galleries in the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Designed to preserve collections and operate as educational institutions, curators in these galleries arranged objects according to the rules and aesthetic connections drawn up by neoclassical historians.