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" ... A multifaceted project whose aim was to prepare the first catalogue raisonné of the Museum's Italian paintings ... The first results of the project are now being published as volume one of a planned two-volume work ... This volume presents the historical acquisitions of the collections of Nicola Martelli and Johan Niklas Byström, made in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, respectively."--Vol. 1, p. 7.

This book sheds new light on the relationship between portraiture, social affirmation and the myth of Antiquity as it was experienced and elaborated in eighteenth-century Rome. Drawing upon a wealth of unpublished documents and previously unexamined literary texts, it offers new insights and readings into how the experience of the City in terms of abstract or concrete appropriation affected the ways of portraying native or visiting elite sitters. The Grand Tour portrait, usually discussed as a purely British phenomenon, is here put in its original context of production and compared to the portraits of the Romans themselves. Portraiture and Social Identity in Eighteenth-Century Rome will become essential reading for anyone with a particular interest in eighteenth-century art and its social use.