POMPEI FRESCOES
Mount Vesuvius (1,281m - 4,203ft)
Italy
In Vesuvius with Bacchus and Agathodaemon, Frescoe, Casa del Centenario Pompei,
2nd century BC, Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli
The representation
This wall painting in the House of the Centenary (Casa del Centenario) in Pompeii (Italy) features the earliest known representation of Vesuvius. It appears under the inscribed name Vesuvius as a serpent in the decorative frescos of many lararia. or houses. An inscription from Capu to IOVI VESVVIO indicates that he was worshipped as a power of Jupiter.That is, Jupiter Vesuvius.
The House of the Centenary was the house of a wealthy resident of Pompeii, preserved by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. The house was discovered in 1879, and was given its modern name to mark the 18th centenary of the disaster. Built in the mid-2nd century BC, it is among the largest houses in the city, with private baths, a nymphaeum, a fish pond (piscina), and two atria. The Centenary underwent a remodeling around 15 AD, at which time the bath complex and swimming pool were added. In the last years before the eruption, several rooms had been extensively redecorated with a number of paintings. Vesuvius has a long historic and literary tradition. It was considered a divinity of the Genius type at the time of the eruption of 79 AD: the Jupiter Vesuvius. Mount Vesuvius was regarded by the Romans as being devoted to the hero and demigod Hercules.
Hundreds of artists, from anonymous amateurs to international masters like J. M. W . Turner, Alexandre-Yacinthe Dunouy, Johan Christian Claussen Dahl, Pierre-Jacques Volaire, Joseph Wright of Derby, Pompeo Batoni and many painters of the Neapolitan school of painting (from 1600 to 1850)... incorporated an usually docile, distant Vesuvius or an erupting, furious mountain into their works. In 20th century, american artist Andy Warhol went further and dedicated a series of 18 painting to the Mount Vesuvius known as "Vesuvius by Warhol" (1985) ... Readers of this blog will be able to see those works in our tomorrow post.
The mountain
Mount Vesuvius (1,281 meters- 4,203 ft at present) is one of those legendary and mythic mountains the Earth paid regularly tribute. Monte Vesuvio in Italian modern langage or Mons Vesuvius in antique Latin langage is a stratovolcano in the Gulf of Naples (Italy) about 9 km (5.6 mi) east of Naples and a short distance from the shore.
It is one of several volcanoes which form the Campanian volcanic arc. Vesuvius consists of a large cone partially encircled by the steep rim of a summit caldera caused by the collapse of an earlier and originally much higher structure.
Mount Vesuvius is best known for its eruption in AD 79 that led to the burying and destruction of the Roman antique cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and several other settlements. That eruption ejected a cloud of stones, ash, and fumes to a height of 33 km (20.5 mi), spewing molten rock and pulverized pumice at the rate of 1.5 million tons per second, ultimately releasing a hundred thousand times the thermal energy released by the Hiroshima bombing. At least 1,000 people died in the eruption. The only surviving eyewitness account of the event consists of two letters by Pliny the Younger to the historian Tacitus.
Vesuvius has erupted many times since and is the only volcano on the European mainland to have erupted within the last hundred years. Nowadays, it is regarded as one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world because of the population of 3,000,000 people living nearby and its tendency towards explosive eruptions (said Plinian eruptions). It is the most densely populated volcanic region in the world.
Vesuvius was formed as a result of the collision of two tectonic plates, the African and the Eurasian. The former was subducted beneath the latter, deeper into the earth. As the water-saturated sediments of the oceanic African plate were pushed to hotter depths in the earth, the water boiled off and caused the melting point of the upper mantle to drop enough to create partial melting of the rocks. Because magma is less dense than the solid rock around it, it was pushed upward. Finding a weak place at the Earth's surface it broke through, producing the volcano.
he area around Vesuvius was officially declared a national park on June 5, 1995. The summit of Vesuvius is open to visitors and there is a small network of paths around the mountain that are maintained by the park authorities on weekends.
There is access by road to within 200 metres (660 ft) of the summit (measured vertically), but thereafter access is on foot only. There is a spiral walkway around the mountain from the road to the crater.
The first funicular cable car on Mount Vesuvius opened in 1880. It was later destroyed by the 1944 eruption. "Funiculì, Funiculà", a famous Neapolitan song with lyrics by journalist Peppino Turco set to music by composer Luigi Denza, commemorates its opening.
