"Sir William and Lady Hamilton" exhibition in Naples

In the wake of the important studies by Carlo Knight (who recently passed away) and the great exhibition at the British Museum in 1996, the Gallerie d'Italia - Naples is dedicating its 2024 autumn exhibition to William Hamilton, His British Majesty’s ambassador at the  court of Ferdinand IV of Bourbon and his wife Maria Carolina of Hapsburg. Diplomat, antiquarian and volcanologist, Hamilton, with his multifaceted personality, found fertile ground in the “Enlightened” Naples of the second half of the 18^th century to affirm and develop his great passions, antiquity and science.

The sections through which the exhibition will unfold will highlight his great interest in volcanology, landscape painting, music, and collecting, as well as the role he played in Neapolitan society of the time, amplified by the sometimes legendary figure of Lady Emma Hamilton. In reconsidering and promoting the extraordinary human, political and intellectual story of a man who was undoubtedly one of the greatest interpreters of his time, leaving a profound mark on the city, the exhibition will also trace the fruitful cultural and artistic exchanges that took place between Italy and the United Kingdom at a key moment in European history.

By virtue of its theme, the exhibition has the support of the Italian Embassy in the United Kingdom as well as the support of the British Embassy in Rome and boasts the presence on the Scientific Committee of Carlo Knight and Kim Sloan, curators of the important exhibition Vases and Volcanoes dedicated to Hamilton in 1996 by the British Museum, and Aidan Weston-Lewis, Chief Curator of European Art at the National Galleries of Scotland.

William Hamilton, cadet son of Lord Archibald Hamilton, the “milk brother” of King George III of England, possessed of a solid cultural education and a rich network of social relations, moved to Naples as British ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples in 1764, together with his first wife Catherine Barlow. In the Bourbon capital, where he stayed until 1798 - when the French troops arrived - he was able to cultivate his greatest passions: Greco-Roman antiquities, of which he became one of the greatest collectors of all time, the scientific study of the eruptions of Vesuvius, collecting ancient and contemporary paintings, the sea and hunting. His residences crammed with works of art and full of charm, Villa Emma in Posillipo, Villa Angelica near Torre del Greco and especially Palazzo Sessa in Pizzofalcone with its famous view of the gulf, were the theatres of a refined and cosmopolitan worldliness for over thirty years. His extraordinary publishing ventures, his relationships with Ferdinand IV and Maria Carolina - cultivated also thanks to his second wife Emma, the legend of whom has been nurtured in modern times by literature and film - and with great international travellers, such as Goethe, Mozart, William Beckford and the Russian Tsar Paul I, made him one of the most influential figures in 18th century European culture, as recognised by prestigious institutions such as the Royal Academy and the Royal Society of London.