Gustavus Hamilton (1710-1746), second Viscount Boyne, and colleagues with whom he made his Tour between 1730 and 1731. Apparently, they are in the cabin of the boat that was to bring them back from Venice. The painting is made by the Venetian painter Bartolomeo Nazari (1693-1758).

Since 1604, when England and Spain ceased there war hostilities, after the restoration of the Stuart dynasty and especially after the "Glorious Revolution" of 1668, which gave the country greater political stability, it became fashionable among the young aristocrats and wealthy families to finish their studies with a trip to Italy. This is what is known as the Grand Tour, which reached the highest intensity in the second half of the eighteenth century, decreasing after 1796, when France invaded Italy and the Venetian Republic fell into the hands of Austria. Initially, these trips were quite unpopular among English families, mostly because they entailed going to a Catholic country where young people could be tempted by forbidden pleasures and amusements. Other drawbacks were the organization of the trip and the high cost.

The trip was normally made with a paid companion. In some cases, not just one companion, but a retinue. Perhaps the extreme case was that of John Cecil, Count of Exeter (1648-1700), who, in 1679, made his first trip accompanied by his wife, his 5 year old son, two guards, a chaplain, 5 women (?), 14 waitresses and 30 horses. The second trip was made only with two companions, a chaplain, an administrator and 4 waiters. Another case was that of Richard Boyle, Count of Burlington, who travelled with a Huguenot pastor, a painter, 4 drivers, a lackey, a waiter, a cook, an accountant, 4 slaves, a preceptor, a physician and 3 musicians. These trips were expensive, since, besides the displacement, they had to pay accommodation, parties and purchases of books and works of art. Gradually, these trips were extended to other social classes

This is the first book’s first sheet, The view of the ruined city of Palmyra. The book is a series of sheets, preceded by an introductory text from the poet Homer. The plate shows a general picture, a landscape of the city, with a certain picturesque ambience, by the atmosphere and the shadows.

Compared with Desgodets’ work, the building here is no longer considered as an autonomous monument, independent from the environment where it is located. Wood starts from the image of the city (the desolation, the ruin...), in which he represents the situation of each piece related to the whole and the correlation each has with the other pieces. This appears as a reflex of certain sensitivity for landscape, coming from his English culture.

And then the plans, elevations ... and details .

The book of the ruins of Baalbeck has the same structure, begins with a perspective,
 

The second expedition was that of James Stuart and Nichola Revet. Stuart was a painter and expert in Greek and Roman art and architecture. He had worked as a guide to Italy and spoke Latin, Greek and Italian. Nicholas Revet was an aristocrat, amateur artist and architect. They met when the latter was doing his Tour of Italy. During the expedition they were accompanied by Gavin Hamilton and Matthew Brettingham (the young one). They went to Naples and then to Greece, Thessaloniki and Athens.

The drawings were published in four volumes of engravings, in 1762 and 1812, entitled The Antiquity of Athens. This book's structure is similar to Wood’s. Every building starts with a view of the ambiance,
 

This is the frieze, a splendid drawing, in which Stuart, as painter, shows how an architect understands and uses the shadows. Surpassing the absurd prohibitions of Durand and Quatremère de Quincy, shadows are used here to explain a form, the structure of the layers of a relief. It is obvious that overlapping and hiding the bodies allowed to deduct, in most part, the depth of the relief, but the resource provides us an easier and faster comprehension of it. They are not real shadows as result of a specific lighting, but shadows made in order to distinguish, basically, two levels of depth. Thus, it implies a simplification of the real three-dimensionality, aiming to improve the comprehension of represented space.