Vero Disegno dell'incendio nella Montagna di Somma...
| Reference: | S41733 |
| Author | Giovan Battista Passari |
| Year: | 1631 ca. |
| Zone: | Naples |
| Measures: | 335 x 190 mm |
€1,000.00
| Reference: | S41733 |
| Author | Giovan Battista Passari |
| Year: | 1631 ca. |
| Zone: | Naples |
| Measures: | 335 x 190 mm |
€1,000.00
Description
Etching and engraving, 1631, printed on contemporary laid paper, with margins, in perfect condition.
Very rare engraving depicting the eruption of 1631, designed, engraved and printed by Giovanni Battista Passari, who dedicated it to Angelo Saluzzo. It is among the early works of Passari, who will return to engraving only towards the end of his artistic career.
Compared with the AD 79 eruption, the event of 1631 was of minor proportions regarding eruptive magnitude and erupted volumes but not in terms of destruction and fatalities. Beginning on 16 December 1631 and culminating the day after, it destroyed all towns and villages around the volcano and killed at least 3000 and maybe up to 6000 persons. It was thus the worst volcanic disaster in the Mediterranean during the past 1800 years.
Like the AD 79 and 472 eruptions, the 1631 event appears to have been purely explosive (although Rolandi et al. 1993a state that lava flows did occur in 1631) but was characterized by the emplacement of devastating pyroclastic surges and flows. The eruption occurred after a repose period lasting at least 130 and probably almost 500 years. Very detailed but in part confusing or even misleading information is available about the 1631 eruption from contemporaneous or near-contemporaneous sources. The eruption began on December 16 anu was, virtually over on December 18
In the chronicles, the most vivid and terrible image of the nuées ardentes that reached the towns and villages is a smoking mass of ashes, stones, rubble, household items, burning trees and dismembered limbs of men and animals. In the 17th century the land surrounding Vesuvius was thickly vegetated, even in the belt inside the Somma caldera, so the nuées ardentes literally blazed trails through the woods. The settlements were mainly distributed along the coast. The nuées ardentes swept aside all the minor obstacles such as vineyards, huts and farm buildings, which were sometimes torn from their foundations and transported whole for a ways, almost floating on the stream.
This engraving by Giovan Battista Passaro illustrates the main phenomena of the 1631 A.D, eruption, the localites damaged by nuèes ardentes and the ships sent by the Viceroy of Spain in the morning of Friday 19.
At the bottom: VERO DISEGNO DELL’INCENDIO NELLA MONTAGNA DI SOMMA ALTRIMENTE DETTO MONS VESUVII DISTANTE DA NAPOLI SEI MIGLIA a 16 dicembre 1631.
In the upper right corner the dedication of Passeri to: al molto illustre Signore Angelo Saluzzo , mio Padrone Colendissimo, Gio Battista Passeri D.D.
The caption reads: Nomi di tutti le Terre e Casali abruggiate: A Portici, B Pietra Bianca, C Resino, D Torre dello Grieco, E Torre Anuntiata, F Scafato, G Bosco, H Sarno, I S. Sebastian, Gio. Battista Passaru, Formis Neap.
Towards the east , along the coast ,the reference to Castellammare di Stabia.
Below and close to the town of San Giovanni a Teduccio: In questa Chiesa di Santa Maria del Soccorso 3, miracolosamente si fermò il fuoco che veneva verso Napoli, et in detta Chiesa si salvarono da cento persone. Accanto la Chiesa di Santa Maria di Costantinopoli, segue verso ovest il borgo di San Giovanni a Teduccio. Al centro del golfo, due imbarcazioni con la prua verso terra cercano di soccorrere i fuggiaschi"
Literature
L. Fino, Vesuvio e Campi Flegrei: due miti del grand tour nella grafica di tre secoli: stampe, disegni e acquerelli dal 1540 al 1876 (1993), p. 47; C. De Seta, A. Buccaro, Iconografia delle città in Campania: Napoli e i centri della provincia (2006): p. 272, n. 2; Antiquity Recovered: The Legacy of Pompeii and Herculaneum a cura di Victoria C. Coates Gardner, Victoria C. Gardner Coates, Victoria C.. Gardner Coates, Jon L. Seydl p. 28, n. 6.
Giovan Battista Passari (Roma 1610 -1679)
|
Writer and painter and engraver. He is better known as the author of the 'Vite de' pittori, scultori ed architetti' (see Passeri, ed. Hess, 1934) and uncle of the artist Giuseppe Passeri (q.v.), than as a painter. He was also a priest. His first artistic training was under Domenichino (q.v.), and his earliest recorded activity, referred to in his 'Vite', was to restore frescoes by Domenico Passignano (1559-1638) in the Villa Aldobrandini at Frascati, in 1634, under the supervision of Domenichino and in collaboration with Giovanni Angelo Canini (q.v.). Passeri's later patrons included some of the aristocratic families of Rome: he painted an altarpiece of the 'Crucifixion' for the Costaguti family chapel in Roccalvecce, near Viterbo (1665), and frescoes in the Palazzo Doria-Pamphilj, Rome (1661). Both works are no longer extant. The topographer Filippo Titi records an altarpiece of the 'Crucifixion with St Jerome and the Blessed Giovanni Colombini' in S. Giovanni della Malva (ed. Contardi and Romano, 1987), now lost. Besides altarpieces, Passeri is said to have painted still-lifes and genre scenes, though only two signed works by him are known: the 'Party Feasting in a Garden', Dublin, National Gallery and the landscape drawing here included (1946,0713.787). A heavily overpainted portrait of Domenichino in the Accademia di San Luca is attributed to Passeri (1641), though it may be a copy. Passeri's 'Vite' were intended to continue those of Giovanni Baglione, published in 1642, and include the lives of artists active in Rome in the middle of the seventeenth century. Although unpublished until 1772, manuscript versions of the text were much used by later biographers, such as Niccolò Pio and Lione Pascoli.
Left incomplete at the time of Passeri's death, the 'Vite' were published posthumously by Carlo Bianconi (1732-1802).
|
Giovan Battista Passari (Roma 1610 -1679)
|
Writer and painter and engraver. He is better known as the author of the 'Vite de' pittori, scultori ed architetti' (see Passeri, ed. Hess, 1934) and uncle of the artist Giuseppe Passeri (q.v.), than as a painter. He was also a priest. His first artistic training was under Domenichino (q.v.), and his earliest recorded activity, referred to in his 'Vite', was to restore frescoes by Domenico Passignano (1559-1638) in the Villa Aldobrandini at Frascati, in 1634, under the supervision of Domenichino and in collaboration with Giovanni Angelo Canini (q.v.). Passeri's later patrons included some of the aristocratic families of Rome: he painted an altarpiece of the 'Crucifixion' for the Costaguti family chapel in Roccalvecce, near Viterbo (1665), and frescoes in the Palazzo Doria-Pamphilj, Rome (1661). Both works are no longer extant. The topographer Filippo Titi records an altarpiece of the 'Crucifixion with St Jerome and the Blessed Giovanni Colombini' in S. Giovanni della Malva (ed. Contardi and Romano, 1987), now lost. Besides altarpieces, Passeri is said to have painted still-lifes and genre scenes, though only two signed works by him are known: the 'Party Feasting in a Garden', Dublin, National Gallery and the landscape drawing here included (1946,0713.787). A heavily overpainted portrait of Domenichino in the Accademia di San Luca is attributed to Passeri (1641), though it may be a copy. Passeri's 'Vite' were intended to continue those of Giovanni Baglione, published in 1642, and include the lives of artists active in Rome in the middle of the seventeenth century. Although unpublished until 1772, manuscript versions of the text were much used by later biographers, such as Niccolò Pio and Lione Pascoli.
Left incomplete at the time of Passeri's death, the 'Vite' were published posthumously by Carlo Bianconi (1732-1802).
|