Rawdon Lubbock Brown (25 Jan 1806 in London – 25 August 1883 in

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...

) was a British

antiquarian An antiquarian or antiquary () is an fan (person), aficionado or student of antiquities or things of the past. More specifically, the term is used for those who study history with particular attention to ancient artifact (archaeology), artifac ...

Life

He was born in London, the second child of Hugh William Brown and Anna Eliza Lubbock. He was baptised on 20 Feb 1806 at St James Church in Westminster. He spent most of his life at Venice in the study of Italian history, especially in its relation to English history. He came to Venice in 1833 to find the gravestone of Thomas Mowbray, the banished Duke of Norfolk mentioned in Shakespeare's play Richard II. In 1838, he bought the

Palazzo Dario The Palazzo Dario is a palace located between the Palazzo Barbaro Wolkoff and the narrow Rio delle Torreselle on the Grand Canal in the sestiere of Dorsoduro, of the city of Venice, Italy. The palace was built in the Venetian Gothic style an ...

, but sold it four years later due to lack of funds. In 1852, he moved into the Palazzo Gussoni-Grimani-della Vida, which was his home until his death. John Ruskin met him in Venice and had an uneven friendship with him. He died at Venice on 25 Aug. 1883, and was buried in the Lido cemetery three days later.

Work

His great work, to which he gave some twenty years and for which he received £200 per year, was done for the British government, by scavenging the

Archives of Venice The Venice State Archive, or State Archive of Venice, () is located at Campo dei Frari, San Polo Venice. Significance The archive contains most of the historical sources that the Republic of Venice has had since the city fire of 976 (cf. Pietr ...

for reports written by the Venetian Ambassadors to England. He aggregated these reports to create the publication: ''A Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts relating to English Affairs existing in the

and Northern Italy''. This was unfinished when Brown died at Venice in 1883, but some further work was done on it by his executor George Cavendish-Bentinck, before in 1889 the completion of the work was taken over by Horatio Brown (no relation).John Pemble, 'Brown, Horatio Robert Forbes (1854–1926)', in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (OUP, 2004)

Works

* ''Four Years at the Court of Henry VIII'', 2 vols (London, 1854), letters of the Venetian ambassador

Sebastian Giustinian Sebastian Giustinian (1460-1543) was a sixteenth-century Venetian diplomat. Between 1515 and 1519, during the reign of Henry VIII of England, Giustinian was the Venetian ambassador to England.Rawdon Brown, ''Four Years at the Court of Henry VIII, ...

* ''Calendar of State Papers in the Archives of Venice'' (6 volumes, published 1864–1886) ;Attribution * *

External links

Rawdon Brown and the Gravestone of "Banished Norfolk"
19th-century English historians Historians of Europe 1803 births 1883 deaths British emigrants to Italy {{UK-historian-stub