Page 66 - Joseph Wright of Derby: Virgils's Tomb & The Grand Tour.

Fig. 31. ROBERT ADAM, Tomb ofVirgil, 1755, graphite, brown, blue, and grey washes. Sir John Soane’s
Museum, London,Adam vol.57/16.
ors in Naples – even though there were lingering
doubts about the exact location of the Roman poet’s
actual grave.30 A design for a fan from the period and
intended for the tourist trade indicated that Virgil’s
tomb was the second most recognizable attraction in
the region (Fig. 27).31 According to one writer who
30. Joseph B.Trapp, ‘The Grave of Vergil,’ Journal of theWarburg and
Courtauld Institutes, No. 47 (1984), pp. 1-31, passim.
31. Metropolitan Museum of Art, NewYork, ‘Fan Design,’ 1779,
watercolor and gouache on vellum, 11 x 21 3/4 in., irregular
(Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 38.91.104).
32. James Russel, Letters from aYoung Painter Abroad to His Friends in
England, 2 vols., London, 1748,Vol. I, p. 96.
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visited the shrine in 1742, by that time engravings of
the structure were ‘common in England.’32 Charles
Louis Clérisseau (1721-1820), an artist with a prolif-
ic output of architectural drawings made both in and
around Rome and Naples, made a drawing (Fig. 28)
of the tomb that served as the basis for several sub-
sequent prints, notably Figs. 29 & 30 here illustrated.
Yet the actual appearance of the ruin varied consid-
erably depending on the source, revealing significant
differences in scale, condition, and surroundings
(Figs. 29 and 30). One of the first British artists
to record the site was Robert Adam (1728-1792),
who visited the area in April 1755 and wrote that
its antiquity ‘induced me to make several sketches of it’