ABSTRACT
England, like the rest of Europe, turned to Italy for aid. The Italian opera ruled supreme. Faint echoes of its sway had already been felt in England a generation earlier, as we know from the diaries of Pepys and Evelyn; but it was not before Anne that any Italian opera was performed upon a London stage. All England's favourite painters came from abroad. Portrait-painters were the only ones in whom England had any interest. England became in that way the repository of many celebrated and beautiful pictures—and the storeroom for an incredible amount of rubbish. There were, to be just, a handful of connoisseurs with taste and judgment who vaguely led the way and enriched England with valuable art. The art of Hogarth offers a picture of eighteenth-century London and a scorching criticism of it.
