(1751 - 1824), classical scholar and collector, of Downton Castle, Herefs, e. s. of Rev. Thomas Knight of Hereford; MP 1780 - 1806; Dilettanti 1781; wrote Analytical Inquiry into the Principles of Taste [1805]; unm.
1772 - 3 Florence, Rome, Capua (15 Mar. 1773), Naples
1776 - 7 [dep. England late summer 1776] Rome ( - by Nov. 1776), Naples ( - 12 Apr. 1777), Paestum, Sicily (25 Apr. - 6 Jun. 1777), Rome (Jul.) [Paris winter 1777]
Knight made two visits to Italy as a young man, while Downton Castle was being built. Of the first his autobiography simply records that he made 'the Tours of France and Italy in the years 1772 and 1773'.1 He was in Calais on 25 September 1772 writing to his site agent; he asked for a reply to be directed to Florence, but it was sent to Rome.2 He was possibly the Mr Knight in Capua on 15 March 1773, going to or coming from Naples.3
On his second visit to Italy he set out with J.R. Cozens, who made a number of drawings for him in Switzerland. By November 1776 they were in Rome. On 24 November Knight was writing to George Romney concerning the passions in art4 and in December he was 'admiring and collecting virtu'.5 He met the German painter Philipp Hackert and his wealthy English pupil Charles Gore, both of whom were interested in topography and archaeology, and on 12 April 1777 the three left Naples together to make a tour of Sicily. Knight compiled a careful and learned journal Expedition into Sicily (Goethe-Schiller archiv, Weimar), for which Gore and Hackert provided illustrations (BMPL).6 They sailed to Paestum where Knight observed of the Doric temples that from close to they appeared 'rude, massive, heavy: but seen at a proper distance, the general effect is grand, simple and even elegant'. They sailed on to Porto Palionuro which they left on 22 April, and arrived in Sicily on the 25th. They were arrested as spies at Patti (the depiction of Sicilian territory was then forbidden without the permission of the King of Naples), but Hackert explained that they were 'dilettanti who travelled only for amusement'. They examined the 'stupendous' ruins at Selinus and at Agrigento Knight commented on the awful discrepancy between ancient grandeur and modern poverty. On 27 May they ascended Mount Etna: 'I felt myself elevated above humanity, & looked down with Contempt upon the mighty objects of Ambition under me', Knight wrote. The party left Messina on 6 June, Knight assessing the Sicilians as 'averse to labor and prone to pleasure, & superstition'. In July they returned to Rome, where Cozens worked up many of the illustrations into finished watercolours. Knight was in Paris in the winter of 1777 and is thought to have returned to England in 1778.
1. MS autobiography, Bodl., Montagu MSS, d.3. ff.124 - 6. 2. See N. Penny and C. Stumpf in Knight 1982, 1 - 4, 19 - 31, 32. 3. ASN cra 1259. 4. Romney 1830, 138, 321 - 32. 5. Thorpe letters MSS (7 Dec. 1776). 6. Published in 1986, ed. C. Stumpf.