CHARLES-FRANÇOIS DE LA CROIX DE MARSEILLE (1700-1782)
Mount Vesuvius (1,281m - 4,203ft)
Italy
In Eruption du Vésuve en 1770, oil on canvas, Private collection
The volcano
Mount Vesuvius (1,281 meters- 4,203 ft at present) is one of those legendary and mythic mountains the Earth paid regularly tribute. Monte Vesuvius or 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. Since the eruption of AD 79, Vesuvius has erupted around three dozen times.
It erupted again in 203, during the lifetime of the historian Cassius Dio.
In 472, it ejected such a volume of ash that ashfalls were reported as far away as Constantinople (760 mi.; 1,220 kms).
The eruptions of 512 were so severe that those inhabiting the slopes of Vesuvius were granted exemption from taxes by Theodoric the Great, the Gothicking of Italy.
Further eruptions were recorded in 787, 968, 991, 999, 1007 and 1036 with the first recorded lava flows. The volcano became quiescent at the end of the 13th century and in the following years it again became covered with gardens and vineyards as of old. Even the inside of the crater was moderately filled with shrubbery.
Vesuvius entered a new phase in December 1631, when a major eruption buried many villages under lava flows, killing around 3,000 people. Torrents of lahar were also created, adding to the devastation. Activity thereafter became almost continuous, with relatively severe eruptions occurring in 1660, 1682, 1694, 1698, 1707, 1737, 1760, 1767, 1779, 1794, 1822, 1834, 1839, 1850, 1855, 1861, 1868, 1872, 1906, 1926, 1929, and 1944. 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 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.
The painter
Charles François Grenier de Lacroix, called Charles Francois Lacroix de Marseille, was a French painter
reknown for his landscapes and marines, in the style of Claude Joseph Vernet, Jean-Joseph Kapeller and Henry of Arles. He was a pupil and imitator of Joseph Vernet, and stayed in Rome in 1754. From 1776, he exhibited with great success and spent a good part of his life between Italy and Provence. In 1780, he published an ad to welcome students in his studio in Paris. Jean-Jacques Le Veau and Noël Le Mire engraved some of his paintings.
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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau
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