Giovanni Battista Lusieri: Expanding Horizons

Giovanni Battista Lusieri and the Panoramic Landscape is the first book in English on this artist.

This book accompanies an exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh from 30 June 2012 to 28 October 2012.

This is the first publication in English devoted to the extraordinary work of the Italian landscape watercolorist Giovanni Battista Lusieri (1754-1821). His career took him from his native Rome, to Naples, then to Sicily and finally to the eastern Mediterranean, where he spent twenty years in the service of the 7th Earl of Elgin as his resident artist and agent in Athens. In that capacity he was closely involved in the removal of the celebrated marbles from the Parthenon and other monuments in Greece.

Lusieri's watercolors combine a broad, panoramic vision, an uncanny ability to capture brilliant Mediterranean light and a meticulous, almost photographic attention to detail. He was widely acclaimed as one of the most accomplished landscape artists of his day, and his works were eagerly sought by British Grand Tourists, but after his death he was soon forgotten, and only recently have his exceptional gifts begun to be recognized once again.