Burlington, Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of
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- Burlington, Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of
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(1694 - 1753), architect and patron; e. s. of Charles, 3rd E. of Cork [I], 2nd E. of Burlington; suc. fa. 1704; m. 1721 Ldy. Dorothy Saville, dau. of 2nd M. of Halifax; FRS 1722; FSA 1724; KG 1730.
1714 - 15 [dep. London 17 May] Mont Cenis (8 Sep. 1714), Turin (11 - 12 Sep.), Genoa (15 - 21 Sep.), Lerici (22 Sep.), Pisa (23 Sep.), Leghorn (24 - 26 Sep.), Siena (27 Sep.), Rome (29 Sep. 1714 - 4 Feb. 1715), Bracciano (6 Feb.), Leghorn (10 - 11 Feb.), Florence (14 - 16 Feb.), Bologna (20 - 21 Feb.), Padua (24 Feb.), Venice (25 Feb. - 5 Mar.), Padua (6 Mar.), Vicenza, Verona (7 Mar.), Milan (10 Mar.), Turin (12 - 14 Mar.) [England 2 May]
1719 Genoa (Oct.?), Vicenza, Venice (21 Oct. - 1 Nov.), Vicenza (3 Nov.), Turin (by 6 Nov.) [England by 24 Nov.]
For all his Italianate accomplishments, Lord Burlington made only two brief visits to Italy as a young man.1 On his first tour he left England in May 1714, immediately after the end of the Spanish Wars. His account book (at Chatsworth) reveals a large retinue which included the Huguenot priest Henry Isaac Gervais (a Vicar Choral from Lismore), and the artist Lewis Goupy. He arrived in Rome on 30 September. Burlington was only six months in Italy and of these nearly three were spent confined to his room in Rome. He was visited by 'ye Pope's doctor' on 12 October, and on 24 November Kent wrote that 'my Ld. Burlington is here but none has seen him yet but a Prussian & they say has been sicke ever since he came'.2 Burlington left his room on 27 December, 'the first day of My Lds going abroad since ye 3rd October last'. By the time he left Rome on 5 February he had bought twelve paintings, including works by Pasqualini, Pietro da Cortona, Viviani and Carlo Maratti; he had also paid 1,500 crowns and presented a set of marble columns to the convent of S.Maria della Vittoria to secure the Madonna della Rosa by Domenichino. He commissioned a large history picture from Giuseppe Chiari (which Lord Harrold saw in Chiari's studio in Rome in February 1716),3 a set of bronze Seasons from Massimiliano Soldani (now in the collection of H.M. The Queen), and he bought porphyry vases, a marble table and a diamond ring. His retinue grew to include a doctor, Alexander Sandilands, and three musicians, the violinists Pietro and Prospero Castrucci, and the 'cellist and composer Filippo Amadei, who returned to England with him; subsequently the sculptor G.B. Guelfi joined him in England. Burlington's return journey included three days in Florence; he was in Padua on 24 February,4 and went straight on to spend eight days in Venice, where he bought '12 pictures in miniature' from Rosalba Carriera (5 March). On 8 March consul Broughton reported that 'last Tuesday my Lord Burlington sett out hence for France and home'.5 He passed through the Veneto with its Palladian architecture in some haste, with only a few hours in Vicenza.
Burlington's second visit in 1719 was even shorter, just two months, but it was of greater practical consequence. He now set out specifically to study Palladio's architecture in the Veneto. In Genoa, probably early in October, he met William Kent, who later said Burlington was 'going to Vicenza & Venice to get Archetects to draw all ye fine buildings of Palladio'; Burlington had taken him to see 'two fine palaces of Vitruvio ... which he has order'd to be drawn'.6 His exact itinerary is not clear, but he certainly spent the last two weeks of October in Venice, departing on 1 November. The weather was against him, and on 6 November he wrote to Andrew Fountaine from Turin that he had been 'in a constant hurry' and had been forced 'to make my stay in Vicenza much shorter than I intended for the waters were so out that there was no possibility of seeing any of the villas at any distance from the town ... here has been such violent rains that the road from Venice to [Turin] looks like a sea, I left a great many passengers on the road and I was the only one that ventured to come on'.7 The same letter also revealed that he had acquired 'some tables at Genoa and some drawings by Palladio at Venice'. On 3 November (the day Dr James Hay [d. 1746] wrote enviously from Venice of Burlington, 'I wish we could afford to travel after his maner, but without his train'),8 Burlington was in Vicenza buying a copy of Palladio's Quattro Libri (Chatsworth) and he succeeded in purchasing some papers relating to Palladio's life and some of his designs from the owner of the Villa Maser (near Asolo). On his return journey he met up with Kent in Paris and they returned home together; Burlington was reported in London on 24 November.9 In the course of this second visit Burlington appears to have met the composer Giovanni Bononcini (who came to London the following year and was ultimately to divide the new Royal Academy of Music in London).
Burlington's collections descended through his daughter to the Dukes of Devonshire.
1. See J. Carr?, Lord Burlington, 50 - 6, 296 - 9, 517 - 18. J. Harris, The Palladian Revival, exh. cat. [1995], 38 - 41, 61 - 4. 2. Kent letters MSS. 3. Wrest Park MSS (Ld. Harrold, 22 Feb. 1716). 4. Brown 1455. 5. SP 99/61, f.22. 6. Kent letters MSS (15 Nov. 1719). 7. See J. Clark, Apollo, 129[1989]:320. 8. Compton MSS, 1187 (Jas.Hay, 3 Nov. 1719. 9. Weekly Jnl.: or Saturday Post, 28 Nov. 1719 (note by E. Gibson).