O Contributo do Grand Tour no Desenvolvimento e Implementação de Métodos de Conservação e Restauro

The contribution of The Grand Tour to the development and implementation of conservation and restoration methods

Abstract

The reception of Classical Antiquity, in the european intellectual cycle of the second quarter of the 18th century, led to the progressive development and implementation of a methodological and normative framework for the conservation and restoration of vesuvian archaeological sites. First Herculaneum (1738) and, later Pompeii (1748), would not only fascinated and amazed the european aristocracy on their Grand Tour in the italian mezzogiorno, but would also require effective heritage protection measures from the peripheral and youthful neapolitan court, as well as from successive royal delegates. The purpose of this article is to present part of the documental and graphic collection from this historical phase, which attests the gradual process of developing legal and interventionist mechanisms with the paths and setbacks that the nascent Archaeology Science had to manage. As we will have the opportunity to demonstrate, such examination reveals the limits of methodological practice, even though they adopted principles that anticipated modern conservative and restoration theory.