Antonio Senape (Rome 1788-1850 Naples)

This album contains 83 drawings showing various landscapes in Italy, Switzerland and France. It includes views in Tuscany (such as Florence and Lucca), Lazio (Gaeta, Terracina, Rome, Tivoli), Campania (Naples, Posillipo, the lake of Averno, Baiae, the Elysian Fields, Cumae, Ischia, Capri, Sorrento, Salerno, Paestum, Atrani, Amalfi, Caserta), Sicily (Palermo, Segesta, Selinunte, Girgenti, Etna, Messina, Stromboli), Calabria, Basilicata (Lauria), Malta, Lago Maggiore, Switzerland (Lugano, Martigny, Sion, Vaud, Bex), Genoa and France (Nice, Villefranche-sur-mer).

According to the frontispiece, the album was commissioned by William John Monson, 6th Baron Monson (1796–1862). He had visited Italy as part of his Grand Tour in 1817 and 1818 and had kept a detailed diary of his travels. The views selected for inclusion in the present album correspond very closely to the locations which Monson discussed in a printed edition of his diary: Extracts from a Journal, containing A Tour in Istria and Dalmatia, 1817, and Sicily, Malta, and Calabria 1819, published in London in 1820. Senape's drawings may have been intended as illustrations for a luxury copy of Monson's journals, or simply to serve as further ricordi of his youthful travels,