Michelangelo Gualandi (1793–1887) and the National Gallery: an unofficial ‘Travelling Agent’ for Sir Charles Eastlake

Abstract

Abstract Over one hundred letters between the Bolognese art agent, archivist and local historian Michelangelo Gualandi (1793–1887) and Sir Charles Eastlake (1793–1865), first director of the National Gallery, London, have recently been discovered in the University Library at Frankfurt. The correspondence charts the pair’s relationship during Eastlake’s decade in office from 1855 and demonstrates the diverse ways in which Gualandi assisted Eastlake, from sourcing books and undertaking archival research to helping to purchase pictures for the National Gallery and Eastlake’s own private collection. It also presents new data concerning the paintings that eluded them and the state of the international art market in the middle of the nineteenth century. We contend that their collaboration-cum-friendship deserves greater recognition and, given the extent of his assistance, that Gualandi might justifiably be repositioned within the gallery’s institutional history as, in many ways, a figure comparable in importance to Otto Mündler, the gallery’s official Travelling Agent.