The Campania of the Voyage pittoresque

Abstract

Beyond its apparent compactness, the book authored by Saint-Non hides a complex plot: under the meticulous and tenacious direction of the French inventor and financier, it represents a collecting work, embodying multiple intellectual contributions, being generally non-homogeneous neither from a cultural nor from an artistic point of view. Also in relation to Campania, whose literature and iconography play a fundamental role in the book, it shows a decidedly ambiguous shape: while on the one hand it shows totally new “discoveries”, offering definitely and decidedly unpublished glimpses in literary and visual terms, at the same time it rehashes ideas, notes and even some ‘prejudices’ of others, retrieving second hand images and notations.  While the text intends to assume the literary form of a travel diary in all its immediacy, or of an account “in direct contact” with the places travelled and narrated, at times it takes on the shape of a compendium of learned knowledge.