Fausto & Felice Niccolini. Houses and Monuments of Pompeii

ISBN-13: 9783836556873 / Angielski / Twarda / 2016 / 648 str.

Valentin Kockel

Opis

Rising from the ashes
The first color lithographs of the rediscovered Pompeii

When the excavations at Pompeii were first placed on a scholarly, archaeological footing in the 19th century, brothers Fausto and Felice Niccolini were close at hand and ready to respond. Making use of the newly introduced technique of color lithography, they documented the buildings, frescos, statues, as well as its most ordinary everyday objects, of the city buried in just 24 hours by the catastrophic eruption of Vesuvius and preserved for over 1,600 years under a mantle of volcanic ash.

The Niccolini s goal was to illustrate all aspects of life in the antique city. Their publication, Le case ed i monumenti di Pompei ( The Houses and Monuments of Pompeii ), which was issued in installments between 1854 and 1896 in Naples, presented over 400 color plates providing not only views, maps, and ground plans of the city and its public buildings, but also offered unprecedented access to Pompeii s private residences. They revealed the astonishing painted wall decorations that adorned these long-buried abodes, their intricate works of art, and the practical utensils of everyday use, conjuring up a vivid picture of each house as a real, domestic space. In addition, animated representations visualized daily life in Pompeii s workshops, taverns, and shops, on its public squares, and in its temples, theaters, and baths.

This meticulous facsimile revives the Niccolini s extraordinary achievement with all color plates and two introductory essays setting the project in its contemporary context and presenting the historical protagonists of the Vesuvian excavations. In addition, we explore the remarkable influence exerted by Pompeian art and by the haunting plaster casts made of victims of the eruption on the visual arts. Across painting, sculpture, and interior design, we trace the Pompeii legacy in the work of Robert Adam, Anton Raphael Mengs, Angelica Kaufmann, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Pablo Picasso, and Giorgio de Chirico, right through to recent masters Duane Hanson and George Segal.

Text in English, French, and German"

Recenzje

"Ein Buch, in dem man über Stunden hinweg versinken kann."

O autorze

Sebastian Schütze war wissenschaftlicher Assistent an der Bibliotheca Hertziana (Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte) in Rom. Er ist Mitglied des Wissenschaftlichen Beirates des Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici in Neapel und Mitglied der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. In den Jahren 2003-2009 lehrte er als Bader Chair in Southern Baroque Art an der Queen's University in Kingston. Seit 2009 hat er einen Lehrstuhl für Neuere Kunstgeschichte an der Universität Wien inne.

Valentin Kockel studierte Klassische Archäologie und promovierte 1978 mit einer Arbeit über die Nekropolen von Pompeji. Er arbeitete am Deutschen Archäologischen Institut in Rom, an der Architekturfakultät in Darmstadt und lehrte bis zu seiner Emeritierung 2014 als Professor für Klassische Archäologie an der Universität Augsburg. Er leitete Ausgrabungen in Ostia Antica sowie auf dem Forum von Pompeji.