Although trade was often the motivation for travel, sometimes, journeys and the cultural interaction that ensued surpassed the brief or superficial encounters associated with merchants. Trade was often entwined with political interests and/or religion, as was the case with the Portuguese presence in India or in China, which produced some very interesting artistic innovations. In Europe, too, the motivation for different cultural references among patrons gave rise to important commissions and the dissemination of different designs and techniques. But whether trade was a means of cultural interaction or a consequence of it nothing expresses quite so well the European appetite for travel as the Grand Tour. Among young, upper-class gentlemen the Grand Tour was introduced as a right-of-passage from about 1660 and gave the elite the opportunity to make contact directly with the cultural inheritance of classical antiquity and the Renaissance.