Grove Koger
In my post for April 6, 2023, I wrote about Italian painter Giuseppe de Nittis and the sketches and paintings he made of Vesuvius during the eruptions of the early 1870s.
In case your knowledge of the subject isn’t extensive, Vesuvius is the volcano that destroyed the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in 79 CE. It lies on Italy’s west coast, towering over the Bay of Naples, and has continued to erupt periodically ever since—more than fifty times in all. There were eight major eruptions in the nineteenth century, including the one that de Nittis painted, with the last taking place March 17-23, 1944. I understand that, today, some two million people live nearby, a fact that deserves some thought …
Decades ago, my first wife and I spent an autumnal afternoon walking down the excavated streets of Pompeii. We were virtually the only visitors that time of year, and just about the only other living creatures in evidence were lizards and, some 2 or 3 feet above our heads, small flocks of sheep grazing on the grass growing on the unexcavated rooftops.
Any number of visitors to the area have left detailed accounts, starting with two letters by Pliny the Younger, who was a witness to the devastating destruction of 79 CE. His accounts are the only ones we have of that particular eruption, and may actually be the earliest accounts we have of any eruption.
More striking still are the paintings by the countless artists who’ve visited the picturesque Bay of Naples since then. The earliest surviving images seem to be those attributed to Italian painter Pietro Antoniani, who was born about 1740 and died in 1805. Later images, by Joseph Wright of Derby, William Turner, and geologist George Poulett Scrope, capture eruptions of 1774, 1817, and 1822, respectively.
Even when it’s calm, as it is today, Vesuvius is a striking sight, with its large cone, the Gran Cono, which dates from the 79 CE eruption, rising to a majestic height of 4,203 feet above the Bay of Naples.
In 1977, Capra Press of Santa Barbara, California, printed an attractive booklet pairing one of Pliny’s letters with an account of the 1944 eruption by French author F.J. Temple, who had served in the French Expeditionary Corps in Italy. The booklet also includes several etchings by American artist Arthur Secunda.
In the interests of comprehensiveness, I must add that Pliny the Younger is also the name of a triple India Pale Ale, said to be the world’s first, brewed by the Russian River Brewing Company of Sonoma County, California. Its alcohol content is 10.25 percent by volume, and I’m pretty sure that the staff in the brewery’s taproom, even though they’re probably not vulcanologists, like to refer to it as “volcanic.” The beer is a complement to the same brewery’s Pliny the Elder, an imperial, or double IPA, which comes in at a mere 8 percent.
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