Enfilade

Exhibition formerly in Chiasso, now on view at the National Archaeological Museum in Naples (MANN):

Herculaneum and Pompeii: Visions of a Discovery
m.a.x. Museum, Chiasso, Switzerland, 25 February — 6 May 2018
Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, 28 June — 30 September 2018

Curated by Pietro Giovanni Guzzo, Maria Rosaria Esposito, and Nicoletta Ossanna Cavadini

The 280th anniversary of the discovery of Herculaneum and the 270th anniversary of that of Pompeii are here celebrated with a completely original approach, by exploring the media and the methods with which the discoveries of the two sites were communicated through the visionary expressions of those who immediately intuited the implications of the discoveries and sought to promote the progress of the excavations and research into them. From the late eighteenth century to the early twentieth, from Goethe to Stendhal, William Gell, Giovanni Battista and Francesco Piranesi, and many drafters, engravers, and lovers of antiquity down to the Alinari brothers, this is an account of the passion for the excavations and precious archaeological finds and the desire to make known the discoveries through letters, hand-coloured sketchbooks, engravings, lithographs, drawings, reliefs, copperplates and gouaches, the first postcards, and daguerreotype photographs.

Pietro Giovanni Guzzo, et al., Ercolano e Pompei: Visioni di una scoperta / Herculaneum and Pompeii: Visions of a Discovery (Milan: Skira, 2018), 392 pages, ISBN: 978-8857238630 (Italian-English text), €38 / $68.