Gavin Hamilton (1723 - 1798), the Scottish-born painter who spent most of his life in Italy, was one of the most prominent figures among the artists and collectors of 18th-century Europe. Although he first came to Rome to further his career as a painter and pursue his interests in the Antique, he soon found himself in the circle of distinguished artists, critics and antiquarians, many of whom were British visitors to Italy on the Grand Tour seeking to build or augment their collections of paintings and archaeological findings. It was thus an easy move for Hamilton to begin dealing in works of art, and his activity as an art-dealer was to become his major occupation on which his name and reputation was to be built. The present publication, with its introductory essay on Hamilton's life and career, and the corpus of more than 300 edited and annotated letters, provides a significant contribution to the literature on the history of collecting. It brings evidence of Hamilton's...