The Venetian Rosalba Carriera (1673–1757) was one of the most important female artists in Europe during the first half of the eighteenth century (fig. 1). Her patrons included foreign collectors, artists, and members of the clergy, as well as fellow Venetians and other Italians. Royals across Europe sought her work: Frederick IV, King of Denmark; Johann Wilhelm von der Platz, Elector Palatine; and Frederick Augustus II, Prince-Elector of Saxony (also known as Augustus III, King of Poland), who amassed more than one hundred pastels by Carriera for a gallery he dedicated to her in Dresden.¹ Carriera’s studio, which she maintained in her home on the Grand Canal, was an important stop on the Grand Tour. Her clients sought portraits of themselves, depictions of various types of allegories, or portraits of Venetian women famous for their beauty or musical talent (fig. 2).²

British travelers were among her most numerous and devoted clients. One of Carriera’s most ardent supporters was Christian Cole (fl. 1697–1735, travel years 1701–5, 1707–14, 1715), secretary to the English Ambassador to Venice. In a letter to the artist alerting her to the imminent arrival of Sir Thomas Frankland (c. 1683–1747, travel years 1704–5), Cole noted that his compatriot “would not like to pass through Venice without seeing the Signora Rosalba [who is] justly esteemed an ornament of Italy, and [the] premier painter of Europe.”³ When traveling through Venice, British travelers also acted as couriers for the artist, ferrying letters, books, pastel chalks, and works of art between Carriera and other friends and acquaintances; among these individuals who populate the Explorer, we can count Cole, Frankland, and Thomas Turner (travel years 1704–5). Still others—Peter Philip Jamineau (travel years -1735–45) and Owen Swiney (1676–1754, travel years 1715–32)—acted as agents for Carriera, negotiating commissions and arranging for payment and deliveries. In short, Carriera’s career was tightly bound to the transactional world of the Grand Tour, and collectively, British travelers played a vital and multifaceted role in the artist’s work life (fig. 3).⁴

I came to the Grand Tour Explorer workshops as a literary scholar of Rosalba Carriera. My research focuses on the artist’s life and work in connection to literary and artistic circles of eighteenth-century Venice and Europe and highlights her networking with female contemporaries. Carriera’s vast correspondence with clients, fellow artists, family, and friends has been critical to my work. With few exceptions (including Cole), British clients and acquaintances are mostly absent from this correspondence. I wondered what further information the Explorer could offer about the artist and her interactions with these individuals, beyond the connections already widely established by art historians. This seemed a particularly intriguing question because, as an Italian artist, Rosalba Carriera does not have an entry in the richly detailed A Dictionary of British and Irish Travellers in Italy, compiled from the Brinsley Ford Archive by John Ingamells (1997). Consequently, information about Carriera cannot be found in one easily identifiable place; instead, references to her appear scattered throughout the entries of the Dictionary. The search power of the Explorer made it easy to gather these references: one inquiry using the “Free word search” tool with the terms Rosalba or Carriera elicited eighty-one entries—a promising start to a more detailed investigation. I decided to explore the database in tandem with Carriera’s correspondence, her work diary, and other primary sources to confirm or clarify details about her British clients and to see if I could discover new information. Pairing primary sources with the database’s digital-search capability was powerful: in some cases, it allowed me to trace connections between Carriera and British clients even when neither Carriera nor Venice were mentioned in the Explorer’s entries. In others, unexpected aggregations of travelers in the search results produced new questions and ideas.

Searches of the database using specific dates and places can help confirm the identity of individuals whose names are illegible in manuscript sources. For example, on May 9, 1724, Carriera recorded in her work diary the visit to her studio of a “M.^r Felo inglese” (fig. 4). A quick search of the Explorer using “Venice” and this specific date reveals that the British traveler Coulson Fellowes (1696–1769, travel year 1724), was in and around Venice at this time. Even though Carriera is not mentioned in Fellowes’s entry, and despite the fact that his name is difficult to decipher in the primary source, we can confirm his identity. Since its publication in 1997, the print version of the Dictionary has been an important source for scholars seeking to resolve questions like the one regarding Fellowes and other Grand Tourists. However, the digital power of the Explorer allows a broad public to explore Carriera’s interactions with the British more quickly, easily, and creatively.⁵

In this essay, I share my experience using the Explorer to investigate two specific aspects of Carriera’s life and work: first, her connections with other women and, second, her studio as a physical and social space. I also aim to provide a vade mecum of sorts for anyone wishing to navigate the expansive territories of the Explorer, particularly for those whose research focuses on the Italians or other Europeans with whom the British travelers interacted.

Rosalba Carriera

Little is known about Carriera’s early life and artistic training.⁶ Most women who became successful artists had fathers, brothers, or husbands who were also artists. This was not the case for Carriera: her father worked as a government office clerk, she had no brothers, and she never married. She maintained her own studio, where her sisters Giovanna and Angela (until the latter’s marriage) worked as assistants and collaborators. After their father’s death, Rosalba—aged forty-six—became the head of the family household, continuing to live with and support her mother and younger sister Giovanna for the rest of their lives.

By her late twenties, the Venetian artist had begun to make a name for herself throughout Europe. She received invitations to courts across Europe and left the lagoon city for three extended trips. The most important of these was an invitation to Paris, where she lived for a year (1720–21) with her mother and sisters in the home of the financier and collector Pierre Crozat. Much admired by fellow artists, as well as by royalty, she counted among her numerous clients Antoine Watteau and the young Louis XV. Back in Italy, two years later, in 1723, she was invited to the court of the Duchy of Modena and Reggio, where she lived for about five months while she created portraits of the princesses of the Este family. In 1730, she traveled with her sister, Giovanna, to the court in Vienna where she worked for about three months, creating portraits of various members of the court, including the Dowager Empress Wilhelmina Amalia.

Carriera’s talent was rewarded with special admission to academies of art in Italy and France, despite their regulations barring female members. In 1705, she was admitted to the Academy of St. Luke in Rome as a meritorious member rather than as a mere “honorary” member, as was typical for most women admitted to art academies (fig. 5).⁷ In 1720, she became a member of two other academies: the Clementine Academy in Bologna and the prestigious Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris.

Throughout her life, Carriera worked assiduously. She was an astute businesswoman, earned a good living, and invested her savings; she was frequently able to lend money to family members and friends in need. She also dedicated time to female apprentices; one of them, Felicita Sartori (1715–60), lived and worked in the Carriera home/studio for more than thirty years and made a name for herself as a miniaturist, pastellist, and engraver. Carriera worked into her early seventies—undergoing surgeries for cataracts, only partially successful, until blindness forced her to stop.⁸

Miniatures and Pastels

Early in her career, Carriera was renowned for her delicate miniature portraits and allegories in tempera, watercolor, or gouache on an ivory ground (figs. 5–7). She helped raise the status of miniature painting to a fine art by removing it from the purely decorative realm of snuff boxes. She was one of the first artists in Europe to bring the feel and texture of large paintings to the miniature form, and her innovative techniques influenced the evolution of the art of miniature painting over the course of the eighteenth century.⁹ At first Carriera used the ivory bottoms or tops of snuff boxes (no longer attached or functioning as such) for her miniatures, but eventually she began to purchase small pieces of ivory and have them cut to size, usually in an oval form. She covered her miniatures with glass and mounted them in metal or tortoiseshell cases before sending them to her clients, who could display them in cabinets, keep them in coat pockets, or hang them from ribbons around their necks. Among the clients present in the Explorer who commissioned miniatures from Carriera are Richard Boyle Burlington (1694–1753, travel years 1714–15), who bought twelve of them; Lucius Charles Cary (1705–85, travel years 1724–25); Mrs. Summers (travel years c. 1700–1705); William Murray, Marquess of Tullibardine (1689–1746, travel years 1710, 1717); Robert Walpole (c. 1701–51, travel years 1722–23; fig. 6), Christian Cole; and William Osbaldeston (1688–1766, travel years 1710–11; fig.7).

Although she enjoyed great success with her miniatures, Carriera is even more celebrated for her contributions to the medium of pastel. About three-quarters of the roughly 440 works attributed to her are pastels.¹⁰ The Venetian artist helped transform pastel chalks from something used mostly for preliminary sketches to a respected and popular medium for portraiture. French and Italian artists who admired and were influenced by Carriera include Charles-Antoine Coypel, Maurice Quentin de LaTour, Giovanna Fratellini, Jean-Baptiste Perroneau, Pietro Rotari, Nicolas Vleughels, and Antoine Watteau. Among British artists who admired, owned, or copied her works, we may count George Knapton (1698–1778, travel years 1725–33), Arthur Pond (1701–58, travel years 1725–27), William Hoare (1707–92, travel years 1728–37), Francis Cotes, and Katherine Read (1723–78, travel years 1751–53).¹¹ The artist’s pastels were extremely popular among her clients, whether these were foreign royalty, Venetian patricians, or Grand Tourists. In fact, the majority of the individuals from the database who have some connection to Carriera sat for a pastel portrait or commissioned allegorical works in pastel. Some of the most well-known British Grand Tourists in the Explorer with pastel portraits by the Venetian artist are Gustavus Hamilton, 2nd Viscount Boyne (1710–46, travel years 1730–31; fig. 8); Henry Fiennes Clinton, 9th Earl of Lincoln (1720–94, travel years 1739–41); Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond (1701–50, travel year 1721); Charles Sackville Middlesex, 2nd Duke of Dorset (1711–69, travel years 1731–33); Joseph Spence (1699–1768, travel years 1731–33, 1739–41); Philip, 1st Duke of Wharton (1698–31, travel years 1719, 1726, 1728; fig. 9); and Lewis Watson, 2nd Earl of Rockingham (c. 1714–45, travel years 1733–34).

Whether creating pastels or miniatures, Carriera heightened both the academic value and the popularity of her work by painting allegories or imbuing her portraits with allegorical elements. This strategy was highly successful with Grand Tourists who specifically requested pictures depicting mythological figures, allegorical figures, or portraits of beautiful Venetian women, as well as portraits of themselves. Her sets of the Four Seasons and the Four Elements were very popular, as were her renditions of Diana and Flora (figs. 10-12).¹² Robert Dingley (1710–81, travel years 1733–34), collector and future director of the Bank of England, wrote to Carriera from London in 1735, requesting a picture of a “pretty young country girl” in the guise of Winter, specifically “like the one in the cabinet of Mr. (Joseph) Smith” (c. 1674–1770, travel years c. 1700–1770). It is likely that Dingley had noticed this picture during his Italian tour in the personal collection of Smith, who spent most of his life in Venice as a merchant banker and as the British Consul from 1744 to 1760. Dingley hastened to add that there was “no need to say anything to Mr. Smith about this.”¹³ His letter reveals how Carriera at times needed to deftly and discreetly serve the ambitions of multiple, competitive British clients.

Carriera’s popularity with Grand Tourists may have been enhanced by the media and genres in which she worked. Her miniatures’ tiny sizes (ranging from c. 7 x 5cm to 15 x 10cm) meant they were easy to wear, carry, or send by post. Carriera’s pastels did not need the extensive drying time of oil paintings, and their generally moderate size (ranging from 30 x 25 to 70 x 50 cm) made them relatively easy to ship or, ideally, have hand-delivered through couriers and friends traveling to other cities.

Exploring the Grand Tour Explorer: Carriera’s Connections with Other Women

Most of the travelers that emerge from searching for Carriera in the Explorer are already known to scholars of the British Grand Tour. But the search results produce new groupings among her British interlocutors—leveling famous with less-well-known clients, acquaintances with friends, intermediaries with visitors to her studio. They therefore offer us a uniquely nuanced and textured view of Carriera’s Grand Tour connections.

One way I attempted to harness the powers of the Explorer was to tap it for information regarding Rosalba Carriera’s connections with other women. When I used the “Free word search” term, and filtered for gender with search terms such as woman, wife, widow, daughter, Mrs., etc., the database led me to two women: Elizabeth Eaton Broughton (d. 1734, travel years 1691–34), whom we hear about through the Dictionary’s entry on her husband, Hugh Broughton, British Consul of Venice (d. 1716, travel years -1691–1716); and the pastellist, Katherine Read, sometimes referred to by contemporaries as “the present English Rosalba”¹⁴ and one of the few women with her own entry in the original Dictionary. I was already familiar with Broughton and Read because of their (spare) presence in the Carriera correspondence. But because the Explorer search aggregated them into a single result, I noticed that they both highlighted difficulties Carriera experienced in working with the impresario Owen Swiney, who acted as agent and intermediary between the artist and her British clients, handling commissions, deliveries, and payments.¹⁵ I was therefore able to look at these women in a new way, appreciating their role as sources of information on Carriera as a businesswoman and considering further the artist’s place in a network of supportive women.¹⁶

Unlike many of the travelers in the Explorer database, Elizabeth Eaton Broughton was a long-term resident in Venice. From 1690 to 1716, she lived there in her role as wife of the British Consul. After her husband’s passing, she remained in the lagoon city (or at least sojourned there) until her own death nearly twenty years later, in 1734.¹⁷ The two extant letters Broughton wrote to Carriera indicate that she was a close friend of the artist and her family and that she interacted with them in both English and Italian. One of the letters reflects a quotidian familiarity between the two women; in it, Broughton extends an invitation to Carriera’s sister Angela for a “country gallop a satterday in y.^e afternoon” in Mestre, should weather permit such an outing.¹⁸

Broughton penned the other letter—in Italian—in 1721, soon after Carriera returned to Venice following the artist’s year away in Paris. Perhaps in part because Carriera was still reinserting herself into life and work in Venice, Broughton wrote in order to relay confidential information about current gossip regarding payments for Carriera’s paintings: “My dear friend, since Mr. Sueniy has let all our compatriots know that he isn’t giving more than 15 sequins for the Portrait you made of Milord, I thought it a good idea to warn you, so that you can act accordingly and make sure you are well paid for the one of Mr. Ratley, and have no other regard than your own interest.” After penning the closing salutation, Broughton made sure to add, “I send this for your information and all of it must remain between us” (fig. 13).¹⁹

Although Carriera’s work diary—the principal source we have of payments received—is silent at the time Broughton penned this letter, we know that between 1723 and 1728, the artist charged roughly twenty-two sequins for a large pastel portrait. We also know that her prices generally remained consistent throughout her career. Furthermore, Broughton—a well-informed and well-connected member of British Grand Tourist circles—clearly indicates that she thought Swiney was promoting insufficient remuneration of the artist.²⁰

Thirty-odd years later, in 1753, Katherine Read wrote in French to Carriera from Paris, after having recently visited the eighty-year old Venetian artist in her studio and having made her portrait. She noted that she was taking great pleasure in viewing works by Carriera at the Académie royale de peinture and in private collections. Since Read was about to return to London, she asked if she might be of service regarding some (unidentified) business with Swiney. The impresario-agent appears at the center of the next extant letter from Read, which she wrote in 1756 after hearing from Carriera for the first time in a year (fig. 14).

The lack of communication—and a rumor of the artist’s death—had led Read to mourn Carriera as “a friend and an artist without equal who had brought greater honor to her sex than had ever been done before.”²¹ This letter reveals that Read had been trying for nearly two years to help Carriera and Consul Joseph Smith (in whose care Read had previously sent letters to Carriera) obtain money owed to them by the recently deceased Swiney. She had even consulted a friend who had transcribed a copy of Swiney’s last wishes, and she was told that the impresario had left everything to “Mademoiselle Woffington.”²² Woffington, in turn, told Read that just before his death, Swiney claimed he owed the Venetian artist nothing. Read explains all of this to Carriera in her letter, saying that she hopes “with all my heart that you can recover your money,” but she is not optimistic.²³

The younger artist concludes her letter by expressing her desire to purchase one of Carriera’s works: a Madonna, “which I think I heard was your last work,” or a Cleopatra, “or another of your finest ideal heads,” whichever the artist would prefer to part with. She tells Carriera that she will pay whatever the artist wishes, and with her closing line she promises that she “will be more punctual than Swinnie.”²⁴ Clearly, Carriera was still conducting business despite her blindness and advanced age, and British travelers were still active participants in her professional life.

The letters of Broughton and Read give us a brief behind-the-scenes look into the ways friends, artists, patrons, and agents navigated the waters of producing and selling art. Like the letter mentioned above from Robert Dingley to Carriera, these missives also reflect the highly interconnected and at times secretive social networking among British travelers to Italy. When examined together, the three letters—written in English, French, and Italian—allow us to consider how Carriera interacted on a multilingual level with that network as a businesswoman. Were Broughton and Read writing to her simply as supportive friends? Or were they also writing as women seeking to protect another woman (artist) from being exploited by a man like Swiney, who could manipulate the art market in British circles? Regretfully, if Carriera penned responses to these letters, they are lost to us, so we can only speculate about what her thoughts might have been. Nevertheless, it is clear that the artist gained important information from women such as Broughton and Read. Ultimately, as Carriera’s correspondence reveals, her business could both benefit and suffer from the close connections and maneuverings in the circles of British travelers to Italy.

Into the Studio

What might the Explorer tell us about Carriera’s studio? The richest source of information on the physical layout and contents of the studio is the inventory of Carriera’s belongings after her death.²⁵ We know that when visitors entered the gallery area of the artist’s studio, they would have stepped into a large, comfortable, vibrant space decorated with green wallpaper and gilt-framed mirrors. The room was populated by numerous chairs upholstered in green damask, small Chinoiserie tables, and a small clock with a pedestal. At the ready were sets of porcelain cups and saucers for hot chocolate and coffee. In winter, visitors could warm themselves by the fireplace as they studied the paintings on display: the inventory notes twenty pastels and seven oil paintings in the gallery in addition to numerous other works of art in the central corridor (fig. 15).²⁶

I hoped the Explorer could help me learn more about the process of sitting for a portrait in Carriera’s studio, as well as the studio’s role as a social space. I was, therefore, looking for firsthand descriptions by Grand Tourists of their visits to the studio, something I could do efficiently because the database includes excerpts from travelers’ letters and journals. I created search term combinations such as Carriera/Rosalba, combined with words and phrases such as studio, sat to, sitting, miniature, pastel, portrait, likeness, draw, paint, chalk, studio, mask, and so forth. These searches resulted in, among others, three entries: George Sinclair (after 1714–76, travel years 1737–38), Martin Folkes (1690–1754, travel years 1733–35), and Willem (or William) Bentinck (1704–74, travel years 1727–28). The Explorer search results prodded me to consider these three entries together as a group. Consequently, we are granted a more vibrant and nuanced picture of life inside Carriera’s studio from the traveler’s vantage point.

Visitors frequently remarked that Carriera had portraits of their compatriots on display in her studio. When George Sinclair visited the artist in the spring of 1738, he noted in his travel journal (as recorded in the Dictionary and hence the Explorer) that he “saw many of her Portraits, both men and women, several english [sic] among them.” Keeping these likenesses about the studio was surely Carriera’s strategy not only to exhibit her talent but also to induce visitors to have their own portraits made by the famous artist’s hand. In this way, she promoted the notion that possession of her artworks was a benchmark of social success.

The display of such portraits also served a social function in the life of the studio. Martin Folkes—scientist, antiquary, and protégé of Isaac Newton—visited Carriera in the summer of 1733 as part of his travels in Italy. He wrote in his journal on July 14 that the artist’s “pictures in crayon have been with Justice esteem[e]d the most excellent pieces of art of that sort.”²⁷ He described the artist as “now better than 50” (she was sixty years old) and declared that during his visit to the studio, he was “extremely well entertained with a great number of fine portraits some of my acquaintance very like.” Folkes also mentioned seeing an Allegory of Music in the studio, which he declared to be “as fine and well disposed as almost anyth[ing] I have seen.” He believed the model for the painting was the lover of an Englishman.²⁸

Whether or not visitors commissioned a work by Carriera, then, it could please and amuse them to find their acquaintances visually present in the studio along with them. By functioning as “virtual” companions and as conversation pieces, the portraits enhanced the level of sociability in Carriera’s studio by encouraging sitters and guests to feel at ease and engaged. Although the excerpt is not included in the Explorer entry, Folkes’s journal supplies us with further information about social life in the studio. Folkes noted that all three Carriera sisters—Rosalba, Giovanna, and Angela— were present during his visit. He remarked that the latter expressed “a great regard” for England, since she had sojourned there with her husband, the artist Antonio Pellegrini.²⁹ Not only did Angela and, especially, Giovanna work in the studio; they also engaged in professional networking by participating in social gatherings with visitors and potential clients.

The Explorer entry on Anglo-Dutch traveler and statesman Willem (or William) Bentinck (van Rhoon) is especially rich regarding Carriera’s studio.³⁰ Excerpts from Bentinck’s and from his tutor’s letters to family in England offer what may be the most detailed account that we have of a client sitting for Carriera. In 1727, as part of a two-year tour of Europe, the Grand Tourist and his tutor Moses Bernège (travel years 1717–28, 1730–31) spent three weeks in Venice. Just prior to their arrival in Venice, they had seen and admired Carriera’s portraits of King Augustus in Dresden. Bentinck sat for Carriera, intending the portrait to be a gift for his mother, the Dowager Countess of Portland. Bernège’s letter to the countess discloses that when Bentinck arrived for the fifth and final sitting, “Rosalba chastised him roundly” for having cut his hair.³¹ In Bernège’s account, the artist was so frustrated at the change in her client’s appearance from his previous sittings that she demanded that he complete the portrait himself by drawing in his hair the way it was before he had cut it. This image of an impatient Carriera is echoed in her correspondence, where she occasionally bemoans the fact that she must spend time making portraits of so many inglesi that she cannot get to her other commissions, even for important, royal patrons.

The Explorer search results prompted me to take a closer look at the Bernège/Bentinck papers directly.³² Many of Carriera’s European contacts and clients populate these letters—from couriers and middlemen to clergy, royalty, and artists. Details in the manuscripts that are not included in the database allowed me to add further dimension to our view into Carriera’s studio. In contrast to his tutor’s version of events, Bentinck’s is far more peaceable, implying that it had been a collaborative and even thoughtful idea for him to draw in his own hair, specifically in order to ensure that his mother not be startled by any change in his appearance (fig. 16). He relates the experience: “But as you remember me with my hair, which was cut off before the Picture was made, that must have made some alteration in the Physio[g]nomy. Yet to prevent that as much as possible and to hide the cutting of my hair, which I did not think you knew, Rosalba gave me her colours, and all the hair upon the forehead, and close to the face are of my own painting, as much as I could remember my hair had been.”³³ Frequently eager to please and assuage his mother in his letters, Bentinck is keen to assure her that the portrait was indeed a good likeness, as “it was thought like by those that saw it at Venice, before I sent it.”³⁴ In fact, son and tutor consistently offer conflicting views of the visit. While Bentinck assures his mother that his portrait “will always be worth something,” his tutor notes that there were portraits hanging in Carriera’s studio that were “strong likenesses” and that Bentinck’s, while good, would have been better had he not cut his hair. Bernège also implies that his ward may have squandered his opportunity for acquiring a fine portrait by Carriera, commenting tersely that “she will stop working very soon as she is starting to become quite aged.”³⁵ Although Bernège’s concern over the quality of the portrait was understandable, his prediction regarding Carriera was inaccurate, as she would go on to work for more than two decades.

The Bentinck/Bernège papers also highlight the dangers inherent in shipping works of art and other memorabilia acquired on the Grand Tour—namely, damage and theft. Bentinck’s instructions to the Dowager Countess reflect the attention Carriera gave to protecting her works from damage in transit, a theme that appears frequently in her correspondence. He tells his mother that the portrait will arrive “in a little black frame with a glass over it and must be left so, she [Carriera] herself desired me that it might be left just as it is because taking it out might easily spoil the Picture, and nothing moist must come near it.”³⁶ In a subsequent letter, Bernège expresses relief in the knowledge that Carriera’s portrait arrived safely in England “because there was reason to fear that the ship had been commandeered by pirates and taken to Spain. The loss of the portrait would have deeply saddened us.”³⁷

The Bentinck/Bernège correspondence is also of interest because it challenges the oft-quoted notion that the creation of pastel portraits was a quick affair, especially when compared to portraits in oil, which required extensive time to dry. Bernège reported that “Madame Rosalba took great care to do it, and requested several visits of Monsieur Bentinck so she could be as successful as possible.”³⁸ Perhaps pastel portraits did take longer than is usually assumed if Carriera typically had her clients sit for her several times for one portrait.

As we have seen in the case with Rosalba Carriera, navigating the Explorer in combination with primary sources is an effective and engaging way to build a nuanced map of the connections between British Grand Tourists and their Italian contemporaries. In diverse ways, the Explorer exemplifies the best of digital humanities resources. Its accessibility online makes it a resource not only for scholars but for any interested reader, regardless of one’s knowledge about the world of the Grand Tour. Scholars interacting with the database can design and employ diverse combinations of searches and filters for efficient and precise targeting of information. Finally, one of the Explorer’s most important features is the way that its search power puts seemingly unrelated pieces of information into dialogue with one another, leading to new perspectives, questions, and ideas.

Notes