We were pleased to find rather a sweet little 18th century Venetian view painting, a capriccio of the Grand Canal, centered by San Simeone Piccolo. Most people, I believe, would have something of a fondness for this rather top-heavy appearing church, with its elongated dome and classical portico overbuilt for its smallish site- a typical case of urban organicism, exacerbated no doubt by the demands of donors for 
Giovanni Scalfarotto to put all the architectural features possible on what is otherwise a rather small church. Even if quirkiness is not something always found endearing, its site, directly across from the railway station and consequently the first landmark one sees upon arrival in La Serenisima, renders it necessarily iconic. Interestingly, we have already sold the painting, and it is returned to Italy.
Possibly the painting, and possibly that it has been 3 years since we’ve been in Italy, has brought thoughts of the Grand Tour to the front of my consciousness. Between ourselves, I have suffered a continuous bout of not so low level anxiety since our last visit, as I failed to throw a coin into Fontana Trevi. I hope that my watching a DVD of ‘Three Coins in the Fountain’ every few weeks or so might function to compensate.
So now we’ve established that Keith and I are Italophiles. Our vocation as dealers in English antiques makes us, as well, Anglophiles. With the English milordi as arguably those by number and engagement who made the most of it, I write this by way of explaining my fascination with the notion of the Grand Tour. But, of course, a single line is inadequate explanation.
As it would have been for the young gentlemen whose experience of a lifetime, typically lasting two or three years, was the Grand Tour, with its ultimate destination Rome. Though fiercely anti-Catholic, an English aristocrat’s role within British world hegemony would result in ostensible affiliation not with the center of Catholicism but with the Roman Empire. This might have been part of the intellectual process of someone as thoughtful as Horace Walpole, but, as I think of it, his ability to simultaneously enjoy, in no order of preference, a warm climate, a picturesque environment, and his relationship with John Shute might have been the more compelling factors. In his dressing room at Strawberry Hill, during the gray days of the English winter, Walpole could have developed these more edifying tropes, using classical examples, in contrast to the studied Gothicism of his home, with which to compare then-contemporary British life, and committed them to writing. And he did.
For the moment, I am like Walpole, as memories of Italy are what I have to content myself with. Travel to and a gray November in England is what is pending for us.