John Talman was one of the three founding members of the Society of Antiquaries in December 1707, and he became the Society’s first Director. His career as an antiquary, virtuoso and collector, however, remains largely unknown. He was the son of the Williamite architect William Talman, who gave him an architectural training that failed to develop into a practice. The inclination of his early years lay towards ecclesiastical antiquarianism, evidenced by a number of drawings of Norfolk churches and their interiors, which are notable for their accuracy and for the detailed and discriminating observation of Gothic detail. He seems to have led a fairly aimless existence in Norfolk and London as an amateur of the arts, diversified by sightseeing tours of northern Europe and Italy, until his father purposefully sent him abroad to Italy in 1709 with the intention of making, purchasing or commissioning drawings and prints that would serve to illustrate the modern developments in architecture and decoration in Italy. William Talman already possessed a large collection of architectural drawings – he had, for example, acquired Inigo Jones’s working drawings and the Palladio drawings that Jones had brought back from Italy – and he also had a modest collection of classical antiquities. His ambition was to use his son as an agent for enlarging his collections, and eventually create a ‘Musaeum Talmanicum’ that could be consulted by English practitioners who needed to design in the Italian manner.

John spent the best part of ten years in Italy, playing a most unusual role in Anglo-Italian relations. Just how exceptional his activities were becomes evident in the fact that this book is edited by Cinzia Sicca of the University of Pisa, who leads a team of scholars attempting to reconstruct the immense collection of drawings and prints assembled by John Talman, the largest such collection ever formed in this country. Sicca makes it clear that Talman knew more about the Italian art scene than any Englishman of his time, and that he was a central figure in the transactions between English collectors and Italian artists and cognoscenti.

The essays in this volume cover many aspects of his career, and it is particularly helpful that Italian contributors have been able to search into archives in Florence and Rome to provide details of the artists, collectors, politicians and ecclesiastics with whom Talman dealt during his time there. We learn much about the Medici court at Florence under Cosimo iii in the chapter by Francesco Freddolini, who establishes how well disposed towards the English that court was, and surveys the artists with whom Talman had dealings. Cristiano Giometti acts as a cicerone to the Roman art world that Talman engaged with, as a collector and as a negotiator for English patrons. Elizabeth Kieven registers his responses to the baroque architecture of Rome. His more unusual interests receive specialist attention here: Cristina Borgioli examines his fascination with ecclesiastical vestments, textiles and embroidery, Antonella Capitano considers his love affair with the liturgy of the Catholic Church and Marco Collareta shows how exceptional was his appreciation of Italian medieval art. Going back even further, it should be noted that Talman was the first Englishman to take an informed interest in early Christian art and in Byzantine art, as a result of his visits to Venice and Ravenna.

Cinzia Sicca herself provides the overview of the great collection of drawings that Talman made, describing its growth and its lamentable dispersal, and explaining its significance for English cultural history. All of Talman’s interests found expression in his collection but, as one reads through the chapters here, one comes to realize that, once on Italian soil, his attentiveness to architectural detail slackened, and he began to indulge – some might say over-indulge – his passion for the treasures of the Roman Church and the apparatus of its services. John Talman had quietly converted to Catholicism some time before he left England in 1709, but kept his faith secret. The difficulties that English Catholics experienced at a time when Jacobitism was gaining strength are well described by Peter Davidson here. In Talman’s case, the freedom to worship openly in Italy, and his discovery of the magnificence of the Roman Church, filled him with a desire to record as much as he could of the details of the ceremonies, the contents of treasuries he was allowed to visit and the baroque monuments of the recent past. His devotion to these matters was obsessive, but he employed excellent local draughtsmen to make drawings for him, and he was recording objects that no Englishman had hitherto noticed.

In the Rome of Clement xi, Talman was in his element. It was a liberal, open city, where the arts flourished, scholarship was respected and foreigners were welcome. The pope was engaged in a programme to preserve the ancient monuments and restore the basilicas and other remains of the early Church, so there was an exciting atmosphere of antiquarian research in town. Talman’s contacts gave him rapid entry to Vatican circles, just as his curiosity about current artistic activity put him in touch with painters, draughtsmen and engravers. Soon he was elected to the Accademia dell’Arcadia, the rendezvous of the cultural elite of the city. The high point of his Roman career was undoubtedly the entertainment that he gave to the Arcadians in 1711 in honour of the pope and his principal adviser, Cardinal Ottoboni. He had music and poetry composed for the occasion, which had as its theme the celebration of the artistic achievements of England and Italy. At its centre were tableaux featuring the pictures of Raphael, Michelangelo and Palladio, on one side, and Inigo Jones, Isaac Fuller and Edward Pierce, on the other. The guests no doubt left in a state of bewildered admiration.

Talman became acknowledged as a virtuoso, with the consequence that he began to have dealings with English collectors who were hoping to snap up works of art from families in decline, or place commissions with Italian artists. Some of these collectors were aristocrats; others were closer to Talman’s own social class. There are illuminating chapters in this volume on his relations with Richard Topham of Eton, by Louisa Bulman, and with the Oxford virtuosi, including Henry Aldrich, George Clarke and John Hudson, by Christopher Baker. The English dimension of his career is enlarged by John Harris’s account of his architectural projects, both those of his own invention and those undertaken in company with his father. Taken together, these chapters transmit a nicely rounded picture of Talman’s activities. There is, however, nothing on the area that readers of this journal will wish to see covered: his life as an antiquary in England and his services to the Society. These matters lie beyond the scope of a book about Anglo-Italian cultural transactions.

The Talmans never found a home for their paper museum. William died in 1719. John married and had children, incurring expenses that caused him to start selling off his possessions. His unexpected death in 1726 frustrated whatever plans he had for the collection’s survival in diminished form, and everything went to auction. Thanks to the distinctive collector’s mark, its contents can still be identified, so that Sicca and her team have been able to make an online reconstruction of this incomparable collection. The colour illustration to this beautifully produced volume make clear the exceptional quality of the drawings that Talman accumulated, and why we should profoundly regret the dispersal of a unique archive.