Cunyngham, Alexander
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- Cunyngham, Alexander
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(1703 - 85), physician of Prestonfield, 3rd s. of Sir William Cunyngham of Caprington; Edinburgh and Leiden U. 1725 and St Andrews 1727; MD 1725; FRCP, Edin. 1727; changed name to Dick and suc. bro. 1746 as 3rd Bt.; m. 1 1736 Janet Dick of Clermiston (d. 1760), 2 1762 Mary Butler.
1736 - 7 [dep. London Jul. 1736] Genoa (23 Sep.), Leghorn (1 Oct.), Florence (5 - 21 Oct.), Rome (26 Oct. 1736 - 17 Mar. 1737), Loreto (24 Mar.), Parma (2 Apr.), Milan, Turin (8-13 Apr.) [England May 1737]
Already a physician of some repute, Cunyngham accompanied the young Allan Ramsay (ten years his junior) on his first visit to Italy. His travel diary, which he illustrated with sketches of costumes, provides some details of their tour.1 They had resolved to speak only Italian in Italy 'as we had been well founded in it before we left Edinburgh'. In Genoa Cunyngham was robbed by a servant who was subsequently sent to the gallies for life. They sailed for Leghorn, but a storm drove them into the coast near Pisa; on 1 October they finally arrived in Leghorn, where they found five thousand Spanish troops in good order after their conquest of Naples. From 5 to 21 October they stayed in Florence before setting off for Rome.
They stayed in the Tre Re, before moving to 'genteel apartments' on the Piazza di Spagna. 'For near three weeks Mr Ramsay and I did little else than scamper about every day all over the streets of the City of Rome'. They observed the Papal Lottery that was said to bring in some £;10,000 to the Pope's Treasury, and fell in with many gentlemen from the Jacobite Court: old Lord Winton and James Murray (the Jacobite Earl of Dunbar), Captain William Hay and the Pretender's doctors, Robert Wright and James Irwin. They were presented to the young Stuart princes at the Villa Ludovisi by Dunbar, and they attended a great Ball given by Cardinal Corsini for Prince Charles's birthday on 31 December at which, wrote Cunyngham, 'most of the English then at Rome were present'. On 27 December Cunyngham was introduced to the Free Masons by Lord Winton, the Great Master of the Lodge, and in January 1737, with Ramsay, was formally admitted. On the first day of the Carnival (23 February) they witnessed the execution of the Abb? Count Trivilli who had written 'a satyr against the Pope and Camera'.2 Dr Wright took Cunyngham to see the manuscripts in the Vatican Library and Ramsay introduced him to Camillo Paderni, the pupil of Imperiali (then Ramsay's master), who gave him a sketch of an Adoration of the Shepherds (Prestonfield). He attended the French Academy with Ramsay (they both had letters of introduction to Vleughels, the Director), and Cunyngham noted that there were not more than 'two or three excellent drawers or modellers in clay among the fifty who were at work'.3 A sketchbook of Cunyngham's was amongst the Prestonfield MSS. When Cunyngham left Rome after five months, he reckoned that his 'whole expence' there, including 'Music masters, and all the things I bought (pictures, prints, seals, &c.) cost me about £;30'; he had had 'more instruction than in any five months of my life past'.4
He left Allan Ramsay and Rome on 17 March and set out for Milan. At Tolentina his lodgings had once been a house built for a Cardinal; he described Papal troops guarding the church of the Santa Casa and the Monastery at Loreto, and recalled the battlefield of Parma where the Austrians and French had fought in 1734. In Turin he saw the elaborate preparations for the forthcoming marriage of the King of Sardinia, and the Marquis de Castello took Cunyngham to see the arrival of the young King Charles Emmanuel III and his Queen on 13 April.
1. See Scots Charta Chest 99 - 123. 2. Hughan, 19, 20. 3. MacDonald 1989, 77 - 8. 4. See Ramsay 1992, 27 - 35.