Abstract

The letters that artists exchange between them represent a speci(c genre of artistic epistolography. In the case study examined here are analyzed 18 unpublished letters belonging to the private correspondence established between Ludwig Grüner and Nicola Consoni between 1842 and 1877. The two artists collaborate intensely on the production of reproductive engravings from the work of Raphael, on the development of the pictorial decoration in buildings commissioned by the Prince Consort Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Queen Victoria (at Buckingham Palace, in the Frogmore Royal Mausoleum). The letters allow to establish a stringent analysis on current artistic practices, on the exemplary role of Raphaelesque models in Victorian England, on the art market, but, above all, they throw light on a very detailed artistic geography of the professional and friendship networks established in the second half of the nineteenth-century relation between Rome and England.