Showcasing Sophistication with Sylvia Sagona

The Grand Tour experience was as much about aristocratic male bonding as it was about the fashionable idea of 'broadening the mind'. Proof of having encountered bizarre but exciting customs would be exhibited on the walls of manors across England, where fellow cognoscenti could identify with the experience. Giovanni Antonio Canal (1697 – 1768), 'Canaletto', developed a new type of urban landscape, the veduta ('view') to cater for this self-advertising. Portraits by the artist Pompeo Batoni (1708 - 1787) portrayed the transformation from youth to gentleman.

Sylvia Sagona completed her post graduate studies of a Maitrise ès Lettres at the University of Aix en Provence where she lived and lectured at the university of Aix-Marseilles before taking up a lectureship in the Department of French and Italian studies at the University of Melbourne.