Hollis, Thomas
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- Hollis, Thomas
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(1720 - 74), antiquarian and radical, of Corscombe, Dorset, 1st surv. s. of Nathaniel Hollis; studied in Amsterdam 1733 - 4; suc. gd.-fa. Nathaniel Hollis 1738; L.Inn 1740; FRS 1757; benefactor of Harvard, Berne and Zurich Universities; left his real estate 'to his dear friend and fellow traveller' Thomas Brand (1719 - 1804).
1748 - 9 [dep. London 19 Jul. 1748] Genoa, Milan [England 3 Dec. 1749]
1750 - 3 Venice (8 Dec. 1750 - 28 Feb. 1751), Rome (by Apr. 1752), Naples (Apr. - 22 Sep.) with visit to Sicily and Malta (Aug.), Rome (late Sep.), Verona, Milan, Genoa (Dec.)
Hollis the republican, 'over six feet tall, Herculean in size and strength', with 'an incomparable manner of gentleness',1 went twice to Italy. Of his first tour, made in 1748 - 9 with his close friend Thomas Brand (later Brand-Hollis), he left 'a curious and copious journal' (untraced),2 with comments on 'arts and sciences, public roads, manufactures, trade, antiquities, and what is called virtu'. He admired Leonardo's Last Supper at Milan, uncovered 'about 20 or 25 years ago, by the means of an English traveller, who had memorandums of [it]' and observed the horrors of war throughout the Genoese state. But he did not think well of the Italians: 'cicisbeying has destroyed almost all manliness and virtue in Italy; and so low are the present Italians degenerated from the magnanimity of their ancestors ... that they even copy the French in most points, as the standards of politeness'.
There was also a 'fuller and more circumstancial' journal of his second tour of 1750 - 3 (untraced), giving his intended itinerary across the Continent and 'throughout all Italy (except those parts of it which I have already seen)'.3 Brand was in Italy at the same time, but they followed different routes. Hollis came from Trieste to Venice, 'where a person's private character and morals are little regarded, provided they do not affect the state'. He stayed there from 8 December 1750 to 28 February 1751, dining 'divers times with the resident Sir James Grey [Gray]' and befriending Joseph Smith (with whom he later corresponded and from whose will he was to benefit).4 It is possible that he met Canaletto, from whom he commissioned six views (five English, one Italian) executed c.1754 - 5;5 it is sometimes alleged that Brand and Hollis appear together in Canaletto's Piazza di Campidoglio and the Cordonata, Rome (Christie's, 8 Dec. 1989), but they were not together in Venice.
Hollis met Brand in Rome,6 and sat for a miniature ivory relief, dated 14 April 1752, by Andrea Pozzi (Harvard, Houghton Library), who also drew Brand. They travelled together to Naples, the depopulation of the Campagna surprising them as they went. Brand left on 22 May, but Hollis stayed on alone; three times he climbed Mount Vesuvius, the first time with Brand, and in 'the last month of [his] stay at Naples' [August] he sailed to Sicily and Malta, seeking a cure for jaundice in the sea air. At Messina he met 'Mr [George] Tatem, the Consul, [and] Messieurs [Stanier] Porten, Murry [?] and Capithorne'. He remarked on the dreadful toll taken by the plague in Messina ('no less than 70,000 of its inhabitants'), and gave careful descriptions of Syracuse, Catania, Agrigentum and Taormina; their antiquarian riches contrasted with Malta where, said Hollis, 'there is not a public library nor a single bookseller'. Hollis left Naples on 22 September to rejoin Brand in Rome, and it was probably on this second visit to Rome in 1752 that Hollis sat for the portrait (dated Rome 1752) now at Harvard by Richard Wilson, from whom he also commissioned a view of the Grotto in Villa Madama.7 Brand and Hollis visited the miniature painter la Tibaldi ('who was to have entered the service of the late Prince of Wales'), met the antiquarian Pancrazi in Cortona, 'Padre Hugford', who painted upon marble at Vallombrosa, and Thomas Jenkins. The two friends parted at Verona, and Hollis went on alone to Milan and Genoa, where he noticed how much war damage had been repaired since his last visit some four years before. Blackburne's account of the travel diaries ended with a list of friendships made abroad, which included Francesco Algarotti, Camillo Paderni (keeper of the museum at Portici), Piranesi and the Abb? Venuti (whose Roma Antica owed its posthumous publication to Hollis).8
After his return Hollis twice offered advice to travellers in Italy: in 1753 - 4 he wrote two letters of Advice to a young Painter at Rome,9 and in September 1760 a memorandum for William Taylor How which included the caveat 'no virtu of any kind to be purchased in Italy for the first six months; and with great caution afterwards', and he also recommended that English company, customs, dress, houses and retainers were 'for the general to be avoided'.(10) Much of his collection of antique sculpture passed to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, in 1850.(11)
1. From the Latin of Cipriani, see W.H. Bond, Thomas Hollis, 20. 2. See Blackburne, 7, 17 - 19, 50. 3. Ibid., 26, 32 - 4, 38 - 9, 47 - 8, 59. 4. Constable-Links, 21. 5. Ibid., nos. 396, 420, 422, 437b, 441. 6. Blackburne, 33 ('Mr Hollis being at Rome for the first time'). 7. Constable, Wilson, 203. 8. Blackburne, 59, 1901. Nichols, Lit. Anecdotes, 3:63. 9. Blackburne, 708 - 9 (letters of 23 Aug. 1753, and London, Jan. 1754). 10. Add.26899 (Bond [at n1], 15 - 16). 11. Cf. D.W.J. Gill, Jnl.of the History of Colls., 2ii[1990]:227. Blackburne, 808 - 39.