This anthology offers a journey through the accounts of Italian travellers from the 16th and 17th centuries, at a time when exchanges between France and Italy played a pivotal role in shaping discourses on art. Bringing together texts from a variety of genres – diplomatic reports, travelogues, letters, chronicles, journals, and even poetry – the anthology explores how the experience of travel and the discovery of works of art is put into words. A selection of texts translated into French by Leonardo da Vinci, Antonio De Beatis, Benvenuto Cellini, Tasso, Giovan Battista Agucchi, Vincenzo Scamozzi, Vincenzo Giustiniani, Cassiano Dal Pozzo and Bernini, amongst others, offers a history of the Italian perspective on French art.

This book is included in DOAB.