Mauro in America: An Italian Artist Visits the New World (review)

Reviewed by: Mauro in America: An Italian Artist Visits the New World Rachael Ziady DeLue (bio) Mimi Cazort. Mauro in America: An Italian Artist Visits the New World Yale University Press. viii, 160. US $26.00 'A most delicious day in the New World': so the Italian artist Mauro Gandolfi described his rambles in Schuylkill, near Philadelphia, during his extended stay in the United States in 1816. This phrase epitomizes the tone of Mauro's account of his travels, 'Voyage to the United States,' penned six years later in 1822 and here transcribed and translated by Antonia Reiner Franklin and Mimi Cazort, and introduced by Cazort. By turns exuberant and perplexed, Mauro's rich narrative captures the voyager's enthusiastic immersion in an exotic world - one, according to Mauro, replete with strange customs (some admirable, some not) and fascinating scenery (natural, but also man-made - Mauro is fascinated by the ingenuity of the New World's builders and engineers), and populated by honest, humble, egalitarian-minded citizens. From descriptions of Independence Day celebrations to New York oyster vendors, steamboat travel to public urination, the electoral process to the labour of slaves, Mauro offers up a wide-ranging vision of a culture seen through the eyes of an outsider and, in so doing, provides an unconventional and revealing lens through which to see the history of the young American republic. As Cazort says in her thorough and illuminating introduction, the artist-traveller's manuscript might be compared to other outsider narratives - Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America (1835-40), for example - but differs from these in its relative inattention to matters of politics and governance. Mauro is enamoured of the American democratic system - he attributes the virtuousness of the American people to just such a system - but where de Tocqueville is a political philosopher and social scientist, Mauro is a naturalist, closely observing and compiling his observations so as to create, in textual form, a kind of curiosity cabinet for the delectation of his readers. One of the pleasures of reading Mauro's text - and it is a wonderful read - comes from peering over his shoulder at the specimens - Quakers, shop windows, sycamores, stage actors - he has gathered and arrayed. One of the first things Mauro describes in the 'Voyage' is the marine life he observed during his passage to the New World, and he does so at length; indeed, some of the most meticulously articulated sections of the narrative are those dedicated to descriptions of New World flora and fauna. In Philadelphia, we find Mauro at the museum of natural history operated by the American artist Charles Willson Peale, and the Italian compares Peale's collection to the curiosity cabinets of Europe. Given Mauro's interest in natural history and his awareness of natural history collections on his home continent, it might not be too far-fetched to suggest that he intended his narrative to approximate the function of just such a collection. Indeed, the organization of the text - short sections on a variety of topics butting up against one another - approximates, for the reader, the experience of [End Page 433] moving through an early nineteenth-century collection or cabinet, going from one display case or vitrine to the next (or from one section of text to another), observing and imbibing knowledge along the way. The interest and significance of Mauro's narrative is manifold. Historians of American culture and art will find Mauro's first-hand descriptions of early American society (from political debate to popular entertainment) and of nascent art academies and markets immensely interesting and useful, and those interested in Italian history and culture or transatlantic studies will find this newly available text informative and compelling. If Cazort is to be faulted for anything in her undertaking, it would be her too eager ascription of objectivity to Mauro, what in her introduction she calls his spontaneous, authentic, unpremeditated, and pure observational mode. There is a quality of spontaneity to the text; yet, given that it was written several years after Mauro's trip and that the trip itself was stimulated and framed by personal and professional fortunes and compulsions, one imagines that a certain amount of...

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