(1702 - 47), o. surv. s. of 1st Vct. Midleton [I] of Ballyanan, Cork, and Pepper Harrow Pk., Surr.; Clare Camb. 1718; I.Temple 1721; suc. fa. 1728 as 2nd Vct.; m. 1729 Ldy. Mary Capell, dau. of 2nd E. of Essex.
1724 - 5 Venice (Sep. 1724), Padua (15 Sep.), Bologna (by 8 Nov. 1724), Rome ( - 1 Mar. 1725), Naples (Mar.), Parma (by 1 Jun.), Venice (Jul. - Aug.)
On 15 September 1724 Brodrick was in Padua.1 From Venice that month he wrote expressing his disillusionment with the Venetian senate, but the published extracts from his correspondence2 provide only a fragmentary account of his subsequent travels in Italy. On 8 November he was writing an earnest letter evaluating the Bolognese school of painters. He went on to Rome where he stayed until 1 March 1725, when he left with Sir Gerard Aylmer for Naples.3 In the summer he returned to northern Italy; he was in Parma on 1 June complaining of the scarcity of pictures to buy, owing to 'the prodigious demand there has been for them in recent years', and in July and August he was back in Venice, where he sat to Rosalba Carriera (priv. coll.), from whom he also bought a copy of her portrait of the contralto, Faustina Bordoni.4 In the spring of 1725 he had bought in Rome two paintings for his uncle, a Rebecca at the Well by Luti and a Tincture of Coral by Poussin, a picture he discussed at some length without showing himself to be particularly perceptive, but he did explain that he had 'waited till the strangers had pretty well left Rome before I dealt for it' in order to keep the price down.
1. Brown 1759. 2. Brodrick letters (Guildford RO, Brodrick MSS 1248), see Black 1992, 225, 267 - 8. 3. Rawlinson jnl.MSS (1 Mar. 1725). 4. Sani 1985, 787 - 8.