“A box of fresh pineapples to the Holy Father”: Pineapples and the worlds of sociability in eighteenth-century Rome

In 1775, the English Duchess of Kingston, socialite with a turbulent life, soul of salons and courts in Paris and London, Rome and St Petersburg, sent five pineapples to Pope Pius VI in Rome. The pineapples originated from the estates of a neighbour of the Duchess, the Duke of Portland, whose gardener, John Speechly, was a pioneer in the practice of acclimatising the rare fruit. Pineapples were still exotic specimens in eighteenth century Italy, with many failed attempts being made to acclimatise them to the soil of various Italian States. From Nottinghamshire to Calais, then Lyon and finally Rome, the Duchess’ pineapples embodied forms of material diplomacy in the ephemeral spaces of enlightened sociability, and were the result of practical and botanical expertise, echoing the distant and past worlds of global exchanges. The present paper will use this case study as a prism through which to reflect on broader questions, from knowledge transfers, to the role of go-betweens, from the cultural politics of popes and cardinals in early modern Rome, to the integration of gift economy in the cosmopolitan texture of Enlightened Europe’s polite society.