Rolfe, Edmund
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- Rolfe, Edmund
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(1738 - 1817) of Heacham Hall, Norf.; St Peter's, Camb. 1754.
1761 - 2 [dep. England 12 Apr. 1759; dep. Geneva 25 Aug. 1760] Turin (31 Aug. 1760), Parma (5 - c.20 Sep.), Turin (Oct. 1760 - Apr. 1761), Milan (15 - 23 Apr.), Brescia, Verona (25 Apr.), Venice (28 Apr.), Padua (18 - 20 May), Vicenza (May, one week), Verona, Mantua, Parma (27 Jun. - ), Modena, Bologna ( - Jul.), Florence (5 - 12 Jul.), Siena (mid-Jul. - 1 Sep.), Leghorn ( - 11 Sep.), Pisa, Lucca ( - 20 Sep.), Florence (20 Sep. - Oct.), Siena (seven days), Rome (28 Oct. - 15 Dec.), Naples (late Dec. 1761 - 5 Feb. 1762), Rome (11 Feb. - Mar.), Turin [Norfolk, spring 1762]
From late May 1759 to the summer of 1760 Rolfe was in Switzerland.1 On 31 August 1760 he came to Turin, presumably with Julia de Marino whom he had met in Lausanne and who was then carrying his son. On 5 September 1760 he went to Parma to see the marriage of the Princess Isabelle de Bourbon with Joseph, Archduke of Austria, returning after some fifteen days to Turin, where he spent the winter at the Academy. It was probably there that he acquired the 99 drawings by G.B. Borra, sold by his descendants (now YCBA). On 20 December Julia de Marino gave birth to his son at Villa Nuova, some fifty miles south of Turin. Her name does not recur in his journal, but Rolfe was observed in Milan in April 1761 (with Lord Gormanston and John Needham), still sighing over a lady he had left behind in Turin.2
He went on to Venice and Padua where he found 'the University formerly so famous, is now falling into decay, there are at present few or no foreigners, the only Students are poor People belonging to the Venetian State'. In June Rolfe enjoyed the opera at Parma 'generally one of the very best in Italy, as it is on the French Plan, all Burlesque dancing is excluded'. At Modena he found that a hundred of the best pictures had been sold to the King of Poland and were then at Dresden. But nowhere else did 'Pictures give so much pleasure as at Bologna, because they are nowhere so well preserved.' Rolfe alleged that more than 200 painters were working there, and he was impressed by the Academy of Sciences. On 5 July 1761 he reached Florence, but after a week went on to Siena where he passed seven weeks. On 1 September he returned to Leghorn, 'much the most considerable trading Town in the Mediteranean', 'excessivley clean well built' with some 40,000 inhabitants 'of which one third are foreigners'; every thing 'wears a Face of Business', in contrast to Pisa, his next stop, where the streets were deserted. From Lucca he returned to Florence where the antiquarian Bianchi (whose father had been Keeper of the Gallery) showed him round the Uffizi. He saw the 'drawings which were a doing for the Emperor, of everything that is in the Gallery; 12 men had been employed for these 12 years past, and it will take 30 more years to finish the design'. He went back to Siena for a week and arrived in Rome on 28 October 1761. While in Rome he sat for a portrait attributed to Batoni (priv. coll.)3 and he also contributed to a fund for Needham's academic expenses, see John Needham. On 15 December he had gone with Needham to Naples for six weeks, returning to Rome on 11 February 1762. In March he was planning to return home via Turin and Paris with Needham, probably to be accompanied part of the way by James Byres.4 By the spring of 1762 Rolfe was back in Norfolk.
1. See Rolfe's jnl., Norfolk RO, MS 21, as printed in E. Neville-Rolfe, Naples in the Nineties, 239 - 317. Moore 1985, 147, 148. 2. Abercairny MSS 391 (Lichfield, 21 Apr. 1761). 3. Illus. Neville-Rolfe (at n1), f.p.238. 4. Lyttelton letters MSS (20 Mar. 1762).