Showcasing Sophistication: Pompeo Batoni's posturing portraits and Canaletto's 'postcards' of Venice with Sylvia Sagona

The Grand Tour experience was as much about aristocratic male bonding as it was about the fashionable idea of  'broadening the mind'. Proof of having encountered bizarre but exciting customs would be exhibited on the walls of manors across England, where fellow cognoscenti could identify with the experience. Giovanni Antonio Canal (1697 – 1768)  'Canaletto', developed a new type of urban landscape, the veduta ('view') to cater for this self-advertising.  Portraits by the artist Pompeo Batoni (1708 - 1787)  portrayed the transformation from youth to gentleman.  

Some Grand Tourists, however, used their portrait to convey coded subversive political messages, as in the case of the swashbuckling  Scottish Colonel William Gordon (1736-1815). 

Sylvia Sagona completed her post graduate studies of a Maitrise ès Lettres at the University of Aix en Provence where she lived and lectured at the university of Aix-Marseilles before taking up a lectureship in the Department of French and Italian studies at the University of Melbourne. She has taught in Paris on 19th century art and literature in partnership with the French Centre d' Etudes pédagogiques de Sèvres, and in Rome with the Università Roma 2 on how the Popes used the city layout for Christian propaganda. 

Sylvia retired to create her own cultural travel company, Travels Through Time, and led study tours through Europe until 2023. During this time, she worked with the French-German television channel Arte and SBS to create a documentary on the invention of the department store. She has recently spent time in Rome filming a YouTube series on notorious Roman women from Vestal Virgins to Fascist spies. 

Your ticket includes tea or Market Lane coffee served before the presentation, and time to browse our exclusive range of books, gifts, and homewares at TJC Emporium.

This event is presented on-site at The Johnston Collection. Please see your ticket for details. NOTE: Tickets for this event do not include access to our house museum, Fairhall. Guided tours of the current exhibition can be booked separately.

This event is supported by The Colin Holden Charitable Trust.

Image: Pompeo Batoni, Colonel William Gordon, 1766 (detail). National Trust for Scotland, Fyvie Castle.