Italian Backgrounds

Italian Backgrounds is Edith Wharton's elegant, sharply observed travel and art writing on northern and central Italy, where landscapes, shrines, mountain sanctuaries, and old cities become occasions for historical feeling and aesthetic judgment. From the austere Swiss village of Splügen, with its laboring meadows, posting-inn, and comic impatience for Italy, she traces the journey south through Chiavenna, the Valtelline, Tirano, and the Aprica pass, watching snow, pine forest, vines, and rococo towns transform both scenery and mood. In remote places such as Cerveno and San Vivaldo, she discovers unexpected devotional treasures—terra-cotta Passion scenes, painted chapels, carved altarpieces, and works long misattributed—turning travel into art-historical inquiry and the thrill of rediscovery. In Parma, too, she finds a city whose plain exterior conceals subtle riches, using Correggio's fame as a test of sincerity, emotion, and true imaginative power. Illustrated by E. C. Peixotto, the book offers a refined portrait of Italy as a world of atmosphere, devotion, and hidden beauty. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.