An engraved view of the 'Gothic Tower At Wimple', published anonymously in 1777, carries beneath it a four stanza verse which might easily be dismissed as frivolous doggerel, typical of the eighteenth-century vogue for Gothick poetry (Fig. 1).' Artless it may be, but this mock-elegy for a glorious medieval past does much to explain why ruinous architecture so appealed to the aristocrats and antiquaries of the age. The verse demonstrates a delight in the so-called 'Theory of Association', by which architecture could be invested with moral or political significance and linked with historical or imaginary events.'

In the late spring of 1796, with Napoleon's armies already occupying parts of northern Italy, the English architectural student Charles Heathcote Tatham was in the process of organising his election to the Accademia di S. Luca in Rome prior to his hurried departure from the city. By seeking affiliation with an Italian fine arts academy, Tatham was following in the footsteps of a number of British students who had visited Italy in the second half of the eighteenth century, but the nature of such Italian academic membership remains widely misunderstood.' In the latest edition of the standard history of British architecture in this period, for example, it is stated that 'from Adam to Soane there is a continuous tradition of participation by young Britons in the current architectural thought of the Italian academies'.2 Tatham's case, which is by far the best documented, suggests that such memberships were in fact conceived by British architects almost entirely in terms of the honorary status and self-publicity they conferred at a time of emerging professionalism. The particular circumstances of Tatham's election in Rome also illuminate the uncertain relationship which existed between an historic Italian academy and more recently founded British fine arts institutions, such as the Royal Academy and the Architects' Club. Moreover, a broader survey of the records of the Accademia di S. Luca suggests that Tatham's dealings with the institution were typical of those of British later eight- eenth-century artists.

In Part I of this article I published and analysed the 1600 and 1621 inventories of Cardinal Benedetto Giustiniani, newly identifying some of the paintings, and linking others more securely with Benedetto's patronage. In this second part, my aim is to make a contribution towards defining the character and taste of Benedetto Giustiniani, differentiating him from his brother Vincenzo and revealing the coexistence of different strands of motivation and intention in Roman patronage in the first twenty years of the seventeenth century.