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34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
University of St Andrews
The Life & Letters of Gavin Hamilton (1723-1798) : Artist & Art Dealer in Eighteenth-Century Rome (2 Vols)
This book (854 pp.) took five years research and writing and resulted in a text that was more detailed than anticipated. It collects and analyses the 333 surviving letters of a central figure of the eighteenth-century Anglo-Roman art world. Some 325 letters were transcribed from the originals in archives in Britain, Italy and the USA and the 84 letters in Italian were translated. Extensive periods of library and archival research (see bibliography) and correspondence with scholars worldwide were required to annotate Hamilton’s references to people, places, artworks and contemporary affairs and to contextualise his practice as artist, dealer and ‘archaeologist’.