VESUVIUS PAINTED BY CLAUDE-LOUIS CHATELET

CLAUDE-LOUIS CHATELET (1753-1795)

 Mount Vesuvius (1, 281m - 4,203 ft current)

Italy

In  Vue du Vésuve et de la Baie de Naples, Oil on canvas, 1781, Private collection 

The mountain 

Mount Vesuvius (1,281 meters- 4,203 ft current) 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. 

The painter 
The french artist Claude-Louis Châtelet,  died guillotined May 7, 1795, is a painter, draftsman and engraver French. He first distinguished himself by his contribution to the monumental work edited by the influential farmer general Jean-Benjamin de La Borde, Topographical Tables of Switzerland, commented by Baron Zurlauben around 1776. Then he became one of the favorite painters of Queen Marie-Antoinette, who commissioned him a number of illustrations of albums depicting the Trianon and its gardens, albums offered by the Queen to her distinguished visitors.
Châtelet is also known for many animated landscapes of Italy and England.
The paintings and drawings of Claude-Louis Châtelet reveal a technique, a talent and a style of a high degree of accomplishment. The characters animating the landscapes blend with charm and poetry in an atmosphere where dense foliage and fertile nature contrast with the geometric mastery of buildings and architectural elements. The games of light and shadow give these paintings a spatial depth and a perspective in which the gaze is lost, going from one group of characters to another and lingering on stair steps or some sumptuous abode. without having breathed the scent of a nature always present and reassuring. This painter, because of his short existence and his political engagements, has left posterity too limited a production to be retained by the history of art as an important figure in the painting of the eighteenth century French. However, his style and mastery, his connections and his talent, could have made, like Hubert Robert, one of the most eminent and endearing painters of this century, if only he had dedicated all his energy to the nobility of his art.

VESUVIUS BY CHRISTEN KOBKE

CHRISTEN SCHIELLERUP KOBKE (1810-1848)

Mount Vesuvius  (1,281m - 4,203ft)

Italy

 In  Bay of Naples with Vesuvius in the Background , oil on canvas, 1843, Toledo museum of Art, 

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.
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.


The painter 
Christen Schiellerup Købke, Danish painter, was born in Copenhagen to Peter Berendt Købke, a baker, and his wife Cecilie Margrete. He was one of 11 children. Købke is one of the best known artists belonging to the Golden Age of Danish Painting.
Købke, a national romantic, painted portraits, landscapes and architectural paintings. Most of Købke’s portraits show friends, family members and fellow artists. He found most of his motifs in his immediate surroundings. Now he is recognized internationally for his well composed and harmonic paintings, for their coloristic qualities and for his sense of the everyday life. But in his lifetime he was almost forgotten, especially because of his early death and limited production. Despite his talent and the praise of various contemporaries, Købke had never been inundated with commissions.
His works are in the collections of not only Danish museums but also such international museums as the J. Paul Getty Museum  and the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh.
In 1838 he received a travel stipend from the Academy,  traveled via Dresden and Munich to Italy accompanied by decorative painter Georg Hilker. They arrived in Rome by year’s end where he met his brother-in-law Frederik Christopher Krohn, sculptor and medallionist, and many other Danish artists. He traveled, along with Constantin Hansen the following summer to Naples, Sorrento, Pompeii and Capri where he painted out in the open air.
He returned home in 1840 with a large collection of sketches for later use and inspiration.

6 VIEWS OF VESUVIUS BY PIERRE-JACQUES VOLAIRE

PIERRE-JACQUES VOLAIRE (1720-1799)

Mount Vesuvius (1,281m - 4,203ft)

Italy

 1. In Eruption du Vésuve vue de Portici, 1771, oil on canvas,  MBA de Nantes, France

2.  In Eruption du Vésuve du 14 Mai 1771, oil on canvas,  Karlsruhe, Staalische Kunsthhalle 

3. In Eruption du Vésuve vue de l'Atrio del Cavallo, 1770-90, Château de Maisons, France

 4. In Eruption du Vésuve, baie de Naples, 1785, Getty Center, Los Angeles

5.    Eruption du Vésuve, baie de Naples, 1780, Museum of Fine Arts,  San Franscico 

 6.  Detail  In Eruption du Vésuve du 14 Mai 1771, oil on canvas,  Karlsruhe, Staalische Kunsthhalle 

About the  views of Vesuvius by Volaire 
The views of Vesuvius in eruption  painted by Pierre-Jacques Volaire are sometimes very similar and only slight details differentiate them, such as, for instance, the location of a boat in Portici Bay, or the displacement of a group of fishermen, or the intensity of the magma flow. By examining the paintings in detail, one can note that some characters are very close to the caldera (painting n° 6) ; even fishermen despite the fury of the volcano do not seem to fear the danger  (painting n° 4 & n°5).
On almost every painting the Bay of Naples faces Vesuvius in eruption, often at night, unfolding its flame tongue under a lunar light. Volaire thus achieves a magnificent light effect, resulting from the contrast of the warm tones of the volcano with the cold light of the moon. The presence of groups of characters observing the incandescent magma creates a perspective between the natural element, the characters and the viewer.
One of these paintings (painting n° 3) was commissioned by the Farmer General Jacques-Onésyme Bergeret de Grandcourt, who, guided by Volaire, climbed the volcano, as reported in his travel diary.

The painter 
Pierre-Jacques Volaire (1720-1799)  was a french painter, from a well-known family of painters in Toulon. His own career began workintg at the painting workshop of the naval dockyard of Toulon, when Joseph Vernet arrived in 1754. The latter, recognized artist, got an order of King Louis XV: Ports of France. To make these landscape paintings, he attached the young Volaire. The two painters travelled together for eight years, painting  the ports of Bordeaux, Bayonne, La Rochelle and Dieppe.
Volaire then leaved Vernet to go to Italy, to Naples and he settled there permanently. During his stay, the Chevalier Volaire, as he called himself, worked on landscapes, seascapes and views of Vesuvius. Night scenes became his specialty and the theme of the eruption of Vesuvius, became the almost exclusive subject of the artist's works which met with great success in the eighteenth century. Indeed, the interest shown by his European contemporaries in the extraordinary manifestations of nature leads them to a thorough study of the volcano, which experienced, between 1750 and 1800, an intense activity.
Back in France, the Chevalier Volaire becomes a corresponding member of the Marseille Academy of Painting and Sculpture.  He exhibited in Paris only three times. He was denied official recognition in France when, in 1786, he tried to sell one of his Vesuvius pictures to Louis XVI ; at the time, the work of a landscape painter - especially one who employed sensational effects - was not seen to be very worthy. Volaire also created pastels and drawings, and his works were frequently engraved.

VESUVIUS BY JOHN RUSKIN

JOHN RUSKIN (1819-1900)

Mount Vesuvius  (1,281m - 4,203ft)

Italy

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.

The painter 

John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, as well as an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy. His writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. Ruskin also penned essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides and manuals, letters and even a fairy tale. The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art was later superseded by a preference for plainer language designed to communicate his ideas more effectively. In all of his writing, he emphasised the connections between nature, art and society. He also made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes, and architectural structures and ornamentation.
He was hugely influential in the latter half of the 19th century, and up to the First World War. After a period of relative decline, his reputation has steadily improved since the 1960s with the publication of numerous academic studies of his work. Today, his ideas and concerns are widely recognised as having anticipated interest in environmentalism, sustainability and craft.
Ruskin first came to widespread attention with the first volume of Modern Painters (1843), an extended essay in defence of the work of J. M. W. Turner in which he argued that the principal role of the artist is "truth to nature".  From the 1850s he championed the Pre-Raphaelites who were influenced by his ideas. His work increasingly focused on social and political issues. Unto This Last (1860, 1862) marked the shift in emphasis. In 1869, Ruskin became the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford, where he established the Ruskin School of Drawing. In 1871, he began his monthly "letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain", published under the title Fors Clavigera (1871–1884). In the course of this complex and deeply personal work, he developed the principles underlying his ideal society. As a result, he founded the Guild of St George, an organisation that endures today.
About mountains he painted quite a lot of times, Ruskin wrote: "They are the great cathedrals of the earth, with their portals of rock, the mosaics of clouds, the choirs of  torrents, and the altars of snow, sometimes with purple sparkling stars." and  "Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery.

MOUNT VESUVIUS PAINTED BY J.M.W. TURNER

J.M.W. TURNER (1775-1851) 
Mount Vesuvius (1, 281m - 4,203 ft current)

Italy

 In Mount Vesuvius in eruption,1817, oil on canvas, Yale Center for British Art, USA.

The mountain 

Mount Vesuvius (1,281 meters- 4,203 ft current) 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. 

The painter 

The english painter Joseph Mallord William Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence in the history of painting. Although renowned for his oil paintings, Turner is also one of the greatest masters of British watercolour landscape painting. He is commonly known as "the painter of light" and his work is regarded as a Romantic preface to Impressionism.

In his thirties, Turner travelled widely in Europe, starting with France and Switzerland in 1802 and studying in the Louvre in Paris in the same year. He made many visits to Venice.   Turner's talent was recognized early in his life. Financial independence allowed Turner to innovate freely; his mature work is characterized by a chromatic palette and broadly applied atmospheric washes of paint. According to David Piper's The Illustrated History of Art, his later pictures were called "fantastic puzzles." Turner was recognized as an artistic genius: influential English art critic John Ruskin described him as the artist who could most "stirringly and truthfully measure the moods of Nature."

Turner's major venture into printmaking was the Liber Studiorum (Book of Studies), seventy prints that he worked on from 1806 to 1819. The Liber Studiorum was an expression of his intentions for landscape art. The idea was loosely based on Claude Lorrain's Liber Veritatis (Book of Truth), where Lorrain  had recorded his completed paintings; a series of print copies of these drawings, by then at Devonshire House, had been a huge publishing success. Turner's plates were meant to be widely disseminated, and categorized the genre into six types: Marine, Mountainous, Pastoral, Historical, Architectural, and Elevated or Epic Pastoral.  His printmaking was a major part of his output, and a museum is devoted to it, the Turner Museum in Sarasota, Florida, founded in 1974 by Douglas Montrose-Graem to house his collection of Turner prints.

Turner placed human beings in many of his paintings to indicate his affection for humanity on the one hand (note the frequent scenes of people drinking or working or walking in the foreground), but its vulnerability and vulgarity amid the 'sublime' nature of the world on the other. 'Sublime' here means awe-inspiring, savage grandeur, a natural world unmastered by man, evidence of the power of God – a theme that romanticist artists and poets were exploring in this period. Although these late paintings appear to be 'impressionistic' and therefore a forerunner of the French school, Turner was striving for expression of spirituality in the world, rather than responding primarily to optical phenomena.

Turner used pigments like carmine in his paintings, knowing that they were not long-lasting, despite the advice of contemporary experts to use more durable pigments. As a result, many of his colours have now faded greatly. 

John Ruskin says in his "Notes" on Turner in March 1878 : "His true master was Dr Monro; to the practical teaching of that first patron and the wise simplicity of method of watercolour study, in which he was disciplined by him and companioned by Girtin, the healthy and constant development of the greater power is primarily to be attributed; the greatness of the power itself, it is impossible to over-estimate. "

MOUNT VESUVIUS PAINTED BY EDGAR DEGAS

EDGAR DEGAS (1834-1917) 

 Mount Vesuvius (1, 281m - 4,203 ft current)

Italy 

 In Le Vésuve, 1892, Pastel 25x30cm, Private collection

The mountain 

Mount Vesuvius (1,281 meters- 4,203 ft current) 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.

- More about Mount Vesuvius

The painter

Edgar Degas born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, was a French artist famous for his paintings, sculptures, prints, and drawings. He is especially identified with the subject of dance; more than half of his works depict dancers. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism, although he rejected the term, preferring to be called a realist. Technically, Degas differs from the Impressionists in that he continually belittled their practice of painting en plein air. He was a superb draftsman, and particularly masterly in depicting movement, as can be seen in his rendition of dancers, racecourse subjects and female nudes. His portraits are notable for their psychological complexity and for their portrayal of human isolation. Degas painted only a few landscapes and very rarely mountains.
At the beginning of his career, Degas wanted to be a history painter, a calling for which he was well prepared by his rigorous academic training and close study of classic art. In his early thirties, he changed course, and by bringing the traditional methods of a history painter to bear on contemporary subject matter, he became a classical painter of modern life.
By the later 1870s Degas had mastered not only the traditional medium of oil on canvas, but pastel as well. The dry medium, which he applied in complex layers and textures, enabled him more easily to reconcile his facility for line with a growing interest in expressive color. In the mid-1870s he also returned to the medium of etching, which he had neglected for ten years. At first he was guided in this by his old friend Ludovic-Napoléon Lepic, himself an innovator in its use, and began experimenting with lithography and monotype. He produced some 300 monotypes over two periods, from the mid-1870s to the mid-1880s and again in the early 1890s. He was especially fascinated by the effects produced by monotype and frequently reworked the printed images with pastel.
Source:
- Wikipedia

MOUNT VESUVIUS BY ALEXANDRE-HYACINTHE DUNOUY

ALEXANDRE-HYACINTHE DUNOUY (1757-1841) 
 Mount Vesuvius (1, 281m - 4,203 ft current)

Italy

In  L'éruption du Vésuve en 1813, Château de Fontainebleau, France

The mountain 

Mount Vesuvius (1,281 meters- 4,203 ft current) 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. 




The  painter 

Alexandre-Hyacinthe Dunouy (1757–1841) was a French painter known for his landscapes.

A native of Paris, Dunouy began his career depicting views of the city and the surrounding region, exhibiting a views of the area around Rome and Naples he painted in the 1780's

at the Paris Salon in 1791. He went back Italy in 1810 under the patronage of Joachim Murat, made king of Naples by Napoleon 1st,  whose he married the sister Caroline. Dunouy became the official painter of the King of Naples and of his wife Caroline Bonaparte. At this time, he painted  studies for the decorations of the Royal Palace of Portici. Therefore, Dunouy frequently receives  orders from the french Imperial family, as views of the castle of Mortefontaine for Joseph Bonaparte, an other of the Emperor's brother.

in 1815, after the exil of Napoleon and the fall of the First French Empire, Dunouy left Italy but does not cease its activity.  HE continue to paint for the next regime and  received from king Louis XVIII, for a view of  Eruption of Mount Vesuvius (the one reproduced above). This painting entrusts the kink to ask Dunouy to realize decorations projects for the Trianon, Compiègne Castle and St. Cloud castle.  His paintings, of small dimensions, are primarily decorative. It is usually presented as classical compositions abounding details. His work follows in the footsteps of Jean-Victor Bertin and Jean-Joseph-Xavier Bidault. Some of his works include elements painted by Jean-Louis Demarne and Nicolas-Antoine Taunay. He continued to exhibit regularly until 1833 and became the master of Achille-Etna Michallon.  He received  medals  in 1819 and 1827. He is also associated with the Auvergne, Savoy, and the area around Lyon. 

Source: 
- Dunouy in BnF catalogue général 

2 others paintings of Vesuvius on this blog: 

- Antique roman first known picture 

- Vesuvius series by Andy Warhol

MOUNT VESUVIUS PAINTED BY ANDY WARHOL

ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)

 Mount Vesuvius (1,281m - 4,203ft)
Italy

In  Vesuvius by Warhol, 1985, series of 18 paintings, oil on canvas

The Mount Vesuvius' Andy Warhol series

Showing Vesuvius erupting in a violent and dramatic explosion, Warhol saw Vesuvius for its fiery energy of past. Shown in a brilliant orange, Andy used schismatic lines to express its volcanic, radiating potential, streaking across a crimson atmosphere.

Andy Warhol left his beloved serigraphies and photographic manipulations to experiment something different for the first time in 1985, when he created the series 'Vesuvius by Warhol', 18 paintings that the artist dedicated to the Italian volcano.

The American pop-art icon portrayed the volcano in the 'catastrophic' act of eruption, which is immortalized at different hours of the day, from dawn to sunset. Thanks to the various chromatisms, as the artist explained in an interview "the volcanoes seemed to be painted just one minute after the eruption." A range of visions and feelings that are also conveyed by the black and white photography, which are Warhol's favourite colours and those easiest to remember.

In Vesuvius, Warhol wrestles the infamous volcano into a visually arresting icon of Amelio’s home city, dressing it up in the garish Pop aesthetic for which he made his name as an artist. Ostensibly, the work celebrates the sublime volatility of nature (hardly an untapped trope in Western art) but, this is Andy Warhol; he would hardly rehearse another’s aesthetics. Instead, Vesuvius falls in-line with the artist’s fixation with the mass-reproduction of culture through imagery, and it is imprinted upon this work as it was upon his silkscreens of criminals, car crashes and mid-century starlets.

Two centuries prior, in the context of Grand Tour art and ephemera circulating around Western Europe, Mount Vesuvius was very much an overexposed icon. In the 18th century, the British sent off their elite sons on the Grand Tour, or a cultural immersion vacation around the capitals of Europe, and visits to Mount Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples was a perrennial and highly popular destination. Like camera-toting tourists do now, these visitors found in maquettes, paintings and woodcuts of Vesuvius the best means to memorialize their stop in Naples. 

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.

MOUNT VESUVIUS (FIRST KNOWN REPRESENTATION)

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.