(1761 - 1841), traveller and antiquarian, 4th s. of Thomas Hawkins of Probus, Cornw.; Trin. Camb., BA 1782; Dilettanti 1799; FRS.
1788 Messina ( - 5 Feb.), Naples (26 Feb.), Rome (by 21 May), Naples ( - 6 Jul.), Leghorn (26 Jul. - 1 Aug.), Pisa, Florence, Venice (2 - after 17 Sep.), Bologna [Dresden]
1793 Venice (Dec.)
Hawkins had been in Greece in 1787 and on 4 December he came to Messina, where he had to perform a thirty-day quarantine.1 Leaving Messina on 5 February 1788, he was in Naples by the 26th. On 21 May he sent a large box from Rome to Leghorn. He also met Flaxman who thought him 'an honor to mankind in great qualities, and [with] the most valuable acquired accomplishments'.2 He was in Leghorn in August3 and went through Pisa and Florence to Venice, where he may be identified as the 'Giovanni Hawkny' who arrived on 2 September 1788.4 His notebook indicates he was still in Venice on 17 September and that he afterwards visited Bologna and Dresden.
He was again in Italy in December 1793, passing through Venice on his way Greece.3 Hawkins's personal servant, James Thoburn, kept a travel diary which described both expeditions through Italy.5
1. Notes by M.J. Stanley from Hawkins MS travel notebook (Ashmolean Mus., Oxford). 2. Constable, Flaxman, 32. 3. F.W. Steer, The Hawkins Papers, a catalogue, [1962], 11. 4. ASV is 760. 5. Hawkins MSS, W. Sussex RO (Steer [at n3], 23).