Gavin Hamilton (artist)
Encyclopedia
Gavin Hamilton is a Lieutenancy area, registration county and former local government county in the central Lowlands of Scotland...
– 4 January 1798, Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
) was a Scottish
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
neoclassical
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
history painter
who is more widely remembered for his hunts for antiquities in the neighborhood of Rome. These roles in combination made him an arbiter of neoclassical taste.
Hamilton came from the prominent family for which the town of Hamilton, South Lanarkshire
Hamilton, South Lanarkshire
Hamilton is a town in South Lanarkshire, in the west-central Lowlands of Scotland. It serves as the main administrative centre of the South Lanarkshire council area. It is the fifth-biggest town in Scotland after Paisley, East Kilbride, Livingston and Cumbernauld...
was named, which was headed by the dukes of Hamilton
Duke of Hamilton
Duke of Hamilton is a title in the Peerage of Scotland, created in 1643. It is the senior dukedom in that Peerage , and as such its holder is the Premier Peer of Scotland, as well as being head of both the House of Hamilton and the House of Douglas...
. Hamilton was educated at the University of Glasgow
University of Glasgow
The University of Glasgow is the fourth-oldest university in the English-speaking world and one of Scotland's four ancient universities. Located in Glasgow, the university was founded in 1451 and is presently one of seventeen British higher education institutions ranked amongst the top 100 of the...
and studied in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
in the 1740s, under the master Agostino Masucci
Agostino Masucci
Agostino Masucci was an Italian painter of the late-Baroque or Rococo period.Born in Rome, he initially apprenticed with Andrea Procaccino, and then became a member of the studio of Carlo Maratta. He joined the Accademia di San Luca in 1724, and from 1736 to 1738, he was director or Principe...
. After a brief return home, he did some portrait painting in London, and returned to Rome in 1756 where he lived for the rest of his life.
Aside from a few portraits of friends, the Hamilton family and British people on the Grand Tour
Grand Tour
The Grand Tour was the traditional trip of Europe undertaken by mainly upper-class European young men of means. The custom flourished from about 1660 until the advent of large-scale rail transit in the 1840s, and was associated with a standard itinerary. It served as an educational rite of passage...
, most of his paintings, many of which are very large, were of classical Greek
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
and Roman
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
subjects. His most famous is a cycle of six paintings from Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
's Iliad
Iliad
The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
, which, as engraved by Domenico Cunego
Domenico Cunego
Domenico Cunego was an Italian printmaker.Cunego was born at Verona. Having studied under the otherwise-unknown painter Francesco Ferrari, he began his artistic career as a painter, producing several works, all of which are now lost or untraceable. Aged 18, however, he switched to engraving...
, were disseminated widely and were enormously influential. Also influential was Hamilton's Death of Lucretia (1760s), also known as the Oath of Brutus, which inaugurated a series of "oath paintings" that include Jacques-Louis David
Jacques-Louis David
Jacques-Louis David was an influential French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the preeminent painter of the era...
's famous Oath of the Horatii (1784).
He painted the altar piece of the Scottish national church in Rome, Sant'Andrea degli Scozzesi
Sant'Andrea degli Scozzesi
Sant' Andrea degli Scozzesi is a former church in Rome, near Piazza Barberini on Via delle Quattro Fontane. Once a haven for Scottish Catholics in Rome, it was deconsecrated in 1962.- History :...
, depicting the Martyrdom of St Andrew.
Archaeology
Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...
he undertook excavations at Hadrian's Villa
Hadrian's Villa
The Hadrian's Villa is a large Roman archaeological complex at Tivoli, Italy.- History :The villa was constructed at Tibur as a retreat from Rome for Roman Emperor Hadrian during the second and third decades of the 2nd century AD...
in 1769–1771, at first occasioned by the need of marble for his sculptor to restore sculptures. His excavators reopened the outlet of a low-lying swampy area and "after some weeks' work underground by lamp-light and up to the knees in muddy water" retrieved sculptures from the muck where they had been thrown with timber when the sacred grove was levelled (Smith 1901:308). From 1771 Hamilton excavated other sites in the environs of Rome: Cardinal Flavio Chigi's Tor Colombaro, 1771–72, Albano, 1772, Monte Cagnolo 1772–73, Ostia 1774–75, the Villa Fonseca on the Caelian Hill
Caelian Hill
The Caelian Hill is one of the famous Seven Hills of Rome. Under reign of Tullus Hostilius, the entire population of Alba Longa was forcibly resettled on the Caelian Hill...
in Rome, "Roma Vecchia" (the Villa dei Quintili
Villa dei Quintili
The Villa of the Quintilii is an ancient Roman villa beyond the fifth milestone along the Via Appia Antica just outside the traditional boundaries of Rome, Italy...
), ca 1775 Castel di Guido and Gabii
Gabii
Gabii was an ancient city of Latium, located due east of Rome along the Via Praenestina, which was in early times known as the Via Gabina....
. In an age when restorations to Roman sculptures were broadly conceived and the refinishing of whole surfaces was still common practice, Hamilton has maintained a reputation for an honest man who did not tamper untowardly with the sculptures that passed through his hands. Many of the works of art recovered were sold to Hamilton's British clients, most notably to Charles Townley, to whom Hamilton wrote "the most valuable acquisition a man of refined taste can make, is a piece of fine Greek Sculpture", and to William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne
William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne
William Petty-FitzMaurice, 1st Marquess of Lansdowne, KG, PC , known as The Earl of Shelburne between 1761 and 1784, by which title he is generally known to history, was an Irish-born British Whig statesman who was the first Home Secretary in 1782 and then Prime Minister 1782–1783 during the final...
at Shelburne, later Lansdowne House, London. The Warwick Vase
Warwick Vase
The Warwick Vase is an ancient Roman marble vase with Bacchic ornament that was discovered at Hadrian's Villa, Tivoli about 1771 by Gavin Hamilton, a Scottish painter-antiquarian and art dealer in Rome ....
, which Hamilton discovered at Hadrian's Villa
Hadrian's Villa
The Hadrian's Villa is a large Roman archaeological complex at Tivoli, Italy.- History :The villa was constructed at Tibur as a retreat from Rome for Roman Emperor Hadrian during the second and third decades of the 2nd century AD...
in 1771, he sold to Sir William Hamilton
William Hamilton (diplomat)
Sir William Hamilton KB, PC, FRS was a Scottish diplomat, antiquarian, archaeologist and vulcanologist. After a short period as a Member of Parliament, he served as British Ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples from 1764 to 1800...
, the connoisseur and British envoy at Naples.
Gavin Hamilton worked closely with Giovanni Battista Piranesi
Giovanni Battista Piranesi
Giovanni Battista Piranesi was an Italian artist famous for his etchings of Rome and of fictitious and atmospheric "prisons" .-His Life:...
. He was an early advisor of the young sculptor Antonio Canova
Antonio Canova
Antonio Canova was an Italian sculptor from the Republic of Venice who became famous for his marble sculptures that delicately rendered nude flesh...
, whom Hamilton met at a dinner party in December 1779 on Canova's first visit to Rome, and whom he advised to put aside his early, Rococo
Rococo
Rococo , also referred to as "Late Baroque", is an 18th-century style which developed as Baroque artists gave up their symmetry and became increasingly ornate, florid, and playful...
manner and concentrate on conflating the study of nature with the best of antiquities and a narrow range of classic modern sculptors.
In 1785 he bought the version now at the National Gallery, London, of Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...
's Virgin of the Rocks
Virgin of the Rocks
The Virgin of the Rocks is the name used for both of two paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, of the same subject, and of a composition which is identical except for two significant details...
and sent it to London for sale.
Gavin Hamilton's success, in what were already marginally shady undertakings, for the pope, in addition to claiming one-third of all excavated works, had the right to forbid export of outstanding treasures, lay in his generous offerings to the Museo Pio-Clementino
Vatican Museums
The Vatican Museums , in Viale Vaticano in Rome, inside the Vatican City, are among the greatest museums in the world, since they display works from the immense collection built up by the Roman Catholic Church throughout the centuries, including some of the most renowned classical sculptures and...
, and his generosity in buying excavating rights from landowners.
External links
