PIETRO FABRIS (fl.1740-1792)

A VIEW OF MOUNT VESUVIUS FROM THE SEA SHORE, AT RESINA, BETWEEN PORTICI & TORRE DEL GRECO
Copperplate etching with original hand-colouring
Plate size: 20 x 37.5 cm
 
LITERATURE:
Sir William Hamilton, Campi Phlegraei…, Naples (1776), vol. I, VII;
Brunet III, 31; Lewine p.232; Lowndes II, p.989;
I. Jenkins & K. Sloan, Vases and Volcanoes, London (1996), pp.165-168, cat. no. 43 (for the entire series)
 
 
 
 
This excellently-preserved illustration comes from the first volume of Sir William Hamilton's magnum opus, the 'Campi Phelgraei.’ By the time that seminal work was published,  Hamilton, the British Envoy to the Bourbon Court at Naples, had already established a reputation as one of Europe’s preeminent Volcanologists, with the Royal Society’s publication of his ‘Observations on Mount Vesuvius’ (London, 1772) which ran to three editions in his lifetime. It is however for the ‘Campi Phlegraei’ that Hamilton is today best-remembered, a monumental work with lavish illustrations which put forward Hamilton’s own theories on volcanic activity and depicted numerous sites around Naples and nearby Ischia. The artist responsible for these illustrations, Pietro Fabris, was a talented draughtsman and he managed to combine decorative appeal with both scientific and topographical rigour, thereby creating one of the most sought-after publications on the subject of the past two centuries. 
 
One notable aspect of the illustrative process was the hand-colouring of the prints, a discipline which was taken far more seriously in Fabris’ native Naples and in other parts of Italy at the time than it was anywhere else. The plates themselves are often so opaquely-coloured, both with bodycolour and watercolour, that they are often mistaken for original drawings. Hamilton himself described them as having been ‘executed with such delicacy and perfection, as scarcely to be distinguished from the original drawings themselves’ (Campi, vol. I, p.6). Fabris was directly involved in every aspect of the prints’ production, and was the sole distributor for the entire work, which was originally sold for the princely sum of 60 Neapolitan ducats.