Sweeping up the best things

Travelling abroad to acquire objects at source was an important aspect of the South Kensington Museum’s collecting policy from the outset. With curatorial focus on Italian Renaissance works of art, and growing competition for such objects at salerooms and curiosity shops in London, buying trips to Italy played a critical role in the expansion of the museum’s collections throughout its first half-century. This article examines the interactions between curators at South Kensington and the Milanese art market, and considers the role played by Milan in shaping the museum collections between 1850 and 1910. Through the prism of dealers’ records, curatorial correspondence and key acquisitions, the museum’s activities in Milan are reconstructed and key dealer–curator networks are illuminated, underlining Milan’s position as a centre of the art market in the nineteenth century.