A Note on John Smibert's Italian Sojourn

Abstract

In William Dunlap's History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States (1834) John Smibert (1688-1751) is rightly accorded a place comparable to that of the first Tuscan artists in Vasari. Indeed, the analogy goes further, for it is to his Italian sojourn that Smibert owes much of his rise from a modest role in the history of British art to a pivotal position in the history of American painting.