“Know’st thou the land where lemon trees do bloom, and oranges like gold in leafy gloom . . . .” In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a journey to Italy was considered an indispensable part of a young man’s education. On arduous coach journeys, they pursued the trail of ancient Rome and the Renaissance to Florence, Venice, Rome, and Naples. Artists soon followed them, and thus yearning also led Johann Wolfgang von Goethe south from 1786 to 1788.
Goethe’s Italian Journey vividly conveys his profound enthusiasm but also depicts well-organized, early tourism. Just seventy years later, the first photographers captured stations on the Grand Tour on gelatin silver plates. Giorgio Sommer (1834–1914), like Goethe from Frankfurt am Main, and Carlo Naya (1816–1882) produced intensely poetic views of St. Mark’s Square, the Colosseum, a smoking Vesuvius, and beautiful fisherwomen on Capri. — Do these dreamlike pictures show us what Goethe saw?
This extra-large volume juxtaposes quotes from Goethe with the corresponding images.