John Moore (Northampton)

The Arts in Eighteenth-Century Europe: Case Studies from the Diplomatic Pouch

During my time in Wolfenbüttel, I intend to write several articles that focus on works of art and their international distribution and consumption. For many years now, in archives throughout Europe, I have been reading diplomatic correspondence. In decades past, when diplomatic history reigned supreme, readers of these letters (and the information inserted therein) were most likely neither trained nor attuned to pick up on other themes. From my vantage point, what links often quite different topics is their common documentary source, such that my scholarship highlights the relationship between diplomacy and the visual arts. One article will focus on numismatics, a fundamental branch of knowledge in eighteenth-century Europe and well documented in the holdings of the HAB. In May 1742, José Joaquin Guzman, secretary of state and of war to Charles, king of the Two Sicilies, decided to expand his collection of papal medals and turned - as many in his exalted position did - to the good offices of individuals abroad, in this case the king's agent in Rome, Francesco Dionigi. Their epistolary interchange delineates the mechanisms involved in obtaining the desired objects and demonstrates how the activity of acquisition itself constituted a means of confirming social status. Other projects include studies of a monumental etched panorama of Rome and its accompanying guidebook, and of Meissen porcelain figures of saints given as a gift by the Saxon court to pope Clement XIV.