Il paesaggismo inglese in Italia. W. Coldstream e J.M.W. Turner disegnano Capua

The research focuses on a particular variation of European Landscaping, concerning a small town in the hinterland of Campania. The scenario is Capua, representative of a wide river and hilly territory, rich in archaeological and architectural works, dating until the Twentieth century. The landscape drawings are by two eminent English authors, William Coldstream and Joseph Mallord William Turner, who visited the city in the early nineteenth and mid-twentieth century in very different environmental and cultural conditions. Capua is the changing scene to compare two different approaches to the landscape drawings: the first more thoughtful and tending to the objective representation of reality, the second impromptu but detailed, impulsive but analytical. The critical comparison is not only between two schools of English landscaping - declined in the Italian reality - but also between two complex personalities, and especially between two very different historical and cultural moments. Coldstream documents the destruction of World War II, Turner visits Italy with the erudite curiosity, characteristic of the Grand Tour.