fbpx

THE AFTERLIFE of POMPEII and HERCULANEUM

From the eighteenth century to the digital age

Returning to the Site

This monochrome yellow-red fresco shows a landscape with architecture. To the left is an enclosed shrine on a rock, with an Ionic column supporting a vessel and a sacred tree. To the right is a staircase, flanked on both sides by balustrades, that leads to a gateway depicted in the guise of a small shrine. Inside the sanctuary is a man with a dog. Beyond the aedicula is a columnar tower with a hipped roof. In the background at center is a temple with a wooden gabled roof and decorated with a round shield on the wall.
Architectural landscape, 1st century BCE, fresco, Villa of the Papyri, atrium area, Herculaneum, H. 71.1 cm; W. 90.5 cm, National Archaeological Museum of Naples: MANN 9423. Image © Photographic Archive, National Archaeological Museum of Naples

There is evidence that, not long after the eruption of Vesuvius, people came to Pompeii and Herculaneum to retrieve treasures—owners and looters alike. Some Roman residents may have returned to recover possessions they had been forced to leave behind, while other individuals may have visited to take advantage of the disaster. Over time the buried cities in the volcano’s path faded from memory, but they were not forgotten. More than 1,400 years later, with the aid of ancient texts and a medieval copy of a lost, Late Roman map, Renaissance scholars were able to identify the geographical location of Herculaneum. But the first real contact with artifacts from the Vesuvian area began in the eighteenth century.

Rediscovery

In 1707, after taking over from the Spanish, the Hapsburgs sent viceroys from Vienna to rule Naples. A few years later, in 1711, while digging a well for the Austrian Prince d’Elboeuf’s seaside property at Portici, workmen recovered striking marble statues of veiled and draped women. The discovery prompted further exploration of the area; unknown and unrecognized by the prince, his well was positioned over the lavishly decorated façade of Herculaneum’s theater. The statues were sent to d’Elboeuf’s cousin Prince Eugene of Savoy in Vienna, and a few years later sold to Augustus III, king of Poland and elector of Saxony. Such artifacts were not solely appreciated for their aesthetic importance: to European royalty, antiquities were trophies of political power.

Left: A white marble sculpture of a standing female figure wearing a robe. She crosses her right arm across her chest to grasp her robe while her left arm grasps the robe by her hip. Right: A white marble sculpture of a standing female figure wearing a robe. Her right hand grasps the edge of her robe at her chest while her left arm hangs along her side.
Small Herculaneum woman (left) and large, veiled Herculaneum woman (right), Roman, 40–60 CE, marble, Herculaneum, H. 179 cm; W. 78 cm and H. 203 cm; W. 73 cm. Skulpturensammlung, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden: Hm 327 and Hm 326. Azoor Photo / Alamy Stock Photo
A man stands before a column with his body turned slightly to the right but his head turned to the front. His braided hair peeks out from beneath his curled white wig. He wears a suit of armor and a sash covered with medals, and satin drapery with gold edging is wrapped around his waist. His left hand points outside the picture plane, while his right hand holds a scepter at his side. Behind him is a velvet cloth with gold embroidery and an ermine fur. At the far left is a golden curtain tied back with a golden rope.
Anton Raphael Mengs (German, 1728­–1779), Portrait of King Charles III of Spain, ca. 1766, oil on canvas, H. 151.1 cm; W. 109 cm, Museo del Prado: P02200

The Austrians were unseated in 1734, and Naples and Sicily became an independent kingdom ruled by the Spanish Bourbon dynasty. King Charles III (1716–1788) was keen to expand his private collection of ancient art and ensure control of those prestige finds, so he initiated a series of excavations. The earlier practice of randomly probing the ground hoping to find treasure gave way to a more organized approach during this period in digs led by the mining engineer Roque Joaquín de Alcubierre (1702–1780). In 1738 Charles III initiated an excavation in Portici, right next to d’Elboeuf’s estate, where Alcubierre’s technique involved digging vertical shafts that could then be tunneled horizontally following the course of ancient walls and building foundations. It was a successful approach insofar as it allowed for the effective removal of artifacts, but even contemporary observers were critical of how poorly the excavations were conducted; indeed, workers labored in dangerous conditions with inadequate light and air, and they broke through rooms damaging anything in their path, hacked paintings of their brick underlayer, and pulverized frescoes deemed inadequate for inclusion in the Royal collection. Ten years later, in 1748, digging at Pompeii began as well. Charles III hoarded his finds at the Real Museo Borbonico (the Royal Bourbon Museum, now part of the National Archaeological Museum of Naples).

The engineer Alcubierre moved to Naples in 1750, leaving his assistant, the architect and engineer Karl Jakob Weber (1712–1764), in charge of excavations in the region. Instead of digging like miners tunneling for gems or ore, Weber took a more systematic approach that was much closer to our present-day concept of archaeological excavation: he documented the dates of discovery and locations of each find, prepared meticulous plans of buildings, and sketched some artifacts while they were still in the ground to better record their exact locations. 

A detailed drawing of the floor plan of the Villa dei Papiri, which comprised many rooms laid out along a longitudinal axis. The drawing is in blue, black and red ink, on a yellow-brown paper.
Karl Jakob Weber (Swiss, 1712–1764), Excavation Plan of the Villa dei Papyri, 1754­–58, vellum, ink, gouache, and graphite, National Archaeological Museum of Naples
A black-and-white photograph on yellowed paper in an oval shape. A group of barefoot young men carry baskets on their shoulders. At the far left is a man wearing a jacket and cap who holds a long stick. In the middle ground are excavated columns and walls. Beyond them are standing another man wearing jacket and cap, and a man in a suit. Just behind them is a young boy with a basket on his back.
Edizioni Esposito (Italian, active 1870s–90s), Pompeii, Recent Excavations, 1892–94, albumen silver print, H. 19.2 cm; W. 24.3 cm, The J. Paul Getty Museum: 2004.51.1

Among the early Bourbon excavators of Pompeii and Herculaneum, Weber was an outlier: his interest in the context of finds was the opposite of those concerned only with the valuable artifacts themselves. His attitude and procedure marked a shift in the study of antiquity from a self-aggrandizing cultural and political pursuit to a scientific investigation. In addition, new techniques and specialized tools were developed in tandem with archaeology’s new purpose.

Despite the development of archaeology into a science and the professionalization of the field, well into the nineteenth century excavations at Pompeii were sometimes conducted using forced labor or prisoners, especially for the more physically grueling tasks. In this photo, a uniformed overseer with a cane on the left supervises a group of men in ragged clothing carrying apparently heavy baskets of dirt in the foreground, while three men, perhaps two archaeologists or tourists accompanied by a servant, observe the scene from afar. Some commentators have observed that even as time passed, distance remained between those who oversaw excavations and studied artifacts and the people who dug the site.

Pompeian-Style Revival

A man reclines on a low stone wall. His chest faces forward while his head is turned to show a three-quarters view. He wears a large-brimmed hat, a long cape, knee breeches, stockings, and shoes. Directly behind him is a carved relief with robed and nude figures. In the distance are a crenellated tower and architectural ruins, and beyond that is a low range of mountains. Short vegetation is in front and back of the wall, while vines drape over the relief.
Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein (German, 1751–1829), Goethe in the Roman Campagna, 1787, oil on canvas, H. 164 cm; W. 206 cm, Städel Museum, Frankfurt: 1157

After traveling to Pompeii in 1787, forty years after the city’s rediscovery, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) described his impression: “There have been many disasters in this world, but few have given so much delight to later generations.” The German writer, poet, and scientist was one of the many visitors to Naples from countries across Europe, and those who traveled to the Vesuvian cities—a frequent stop on the aristocratic, educational Grand Tour—often came away with a taste for Neoclassical style inspired in no small way by the discoveries of Pompeii and Herculaneum. The direct experience of the site, as well as the souvenirs brought home from those trips, helped expand interest in the art of antiquity.

The Grand Tour was a costly, multiyear undertaking reserved primarily for men from the privileged class. In an era before mass travel, publications provided access to the discoveries from the Bay of Naples, albeit indirectly, to a wider audience. Published travelogues and visitor reports by intellectuals like Goethe, and especially by the art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768), helped spread further information about the excavation and archaeological discoveries.

In the foreground are excavated columns with figures standing and seated. In the distance are additional architectural ruins. The sketch is executed in outlines with diagonal hatch marks. The drawing is rended in black ink on yellowed paper without any additional pigment.
Giovanni Battista Piranesi (Italian, 1720­–1778), View through the Herculaneum Gate, Pompeii, 1778, pen and brown ink over black chalk on paper, H. 28 cm; W. 42.5 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Robert Lehman Collection, 1975: 1975.1.400
The black-and-white line engraving on off-white paper depicts of an elaborate classical façade with a nude male figure sculpture on either side. At the top is an urban scene with figures in the foreground and Vesuvius in the background. At the bottom is a scene of buildings sliding diagonally while figures in the foreground flee and Vesuvius spews smoke and flames in the background. At center in the façade is written
Frontispiece from Le antichità d’Ercolano esposte. Le pitture antiche d’Ercolano e contorni incise con qualche spiegazione, vol. 1 (Naples, 1757), folio: H. 48 cm; W. 36 cm. Image (CC) CC BY 2.0

Illustrated publications representing artworks also exerted a particularly strong influence on the reception of Pompeian finds within European culture. Charles III was keen to control access to his collection in every respect and refused to allow objects to be copied: he wanted the publication of his trove to take place under his auspices. Indeed, he did arrange for its limited circulation: the eight volumes of Le antichità di Ercolano esposte (Antiquities of Herculaneum Exposed), published between 1757 and 1792, included elegant engravings representing artifacts from Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Stabiae.

Further restricting access to the Bourbon king’s antiquities, members of the royal household gifted the books only to high-ranking dignitaries, and the few copies sold were priced at an exorbitantly high cost.

Nonetheless, foreign scholars undertook their own unauthorized publications of the jealously guarded antiquities collection. With the illustrations redrawn and reengraved, these unsanctioned and more affordable editions appeared in smaller formats, occasionally abridged. Some contemporary scholars suggest that the successful dissemination of images from Pompeii and Herculaneum was as much due to unauthorized publications, such as Voyage pittoresque (1781–86) and Peintures d’Herculanum (1776), as to the official original; with plates frequently based on Le antichità di Ercolano esposte, these pirated volumes often gave ancient works a more interesting appearance than the original book. Indeed, one early publication of the frescoes, Pompéi: Choix de monuments inédits and Maison du Poëte Tragique (ca. 1828), included hand-colored engravings. Even if the printed presentation was a copy of an already tightly controlled visual interpretation of an original artifact, the wide circulation of images from such publications kindled an interest in the growing Neoclassical fashion.

A colored engraving representing painted frescoes with linear borders. The image is divided into three four main sections: two yellow rectangles with graphic decorations left and right of a central panel in red with green, yellow, and white graphic details. The fourth section is a red horizontal strip along the bottom of the image with graphic details.
A colored engraving depicting the excavated courtyard of a house in with frescoes along the walls and a rectangular pool of water in the foreground. In the middle ground at right are trees, while in the background at right are two mountain peaks, one of which emits smoke.
Jules-Frederic Souchet (French, 1799- 1860) and Desire Raoul-Rochette (French, 1789- 1854), Pompei: Choix de monuments inedits and Maison du Poete Tragique (Paris, ca. 1928). Hand-colored engravings representing the House of the Tragic Poet showing a detail from a wall fresco (top) and a perspectival view (bottom). Images courtesy of Jackie and Bob Dunn, www.pompeiiinpictures.com

The works encountered at Pompeii and Herculaneum—either in person or in published form—inspired imitation in the arts and décor of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The German architect and painter Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781–1841), famous for palaces, churches, and theaters, especially around Berlin, visited Pompeii twice; his exteriors are notably influenced by Greek architecture, but some of his interiors directly reference Roman frescoes.

Four female figures with flowing robes dance against a dark background in separate panels. The figure at far left holds a shallow rectangular box in her left hand. The figure second from left balances a basket on her head with her right hand and carries a scepter in her left hand.
Dancers, 1st century CE, fresco, Villa of Cicero, Pompeii, National Archaeological Museum of Naples: MANN 9295. Image © Photographic Archive, National Archaeological Museum of Naples

Paintings in Schinkel’s Schloss Charlottenhof at Potsdam, for example, feature the so-called Pompeian dancers, an example of one of the most frequently reproduced subjects from wall painting at the time. The dancers also appeared on a porcelain dinner set made at Capodimonte, but in this case, the design was derived from engravings in Le antichità di Ercolano esposte rather than a direct encounter with the frescoes themselves.

A photograph of a 19th-century style writing room with pink walls, large silver-colored filligre doors, and large window with a semi-translucent white blind. Thee are three white chairs along the wall and a small wood writing desk in the corner. Along the top of the wall are a series of 11 images representing femal figures with flowing robes dancing against a dark background.
Karl Friedrich Schinkel (German, 1781–1841), writing room for the crown princess in the Schloss Charlottenhof, Sanssouci Park, Potsdam, Germany, 1826–35. Image: Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg (SPSG) / Photographer: Leo Seidel
Two cylindrical vessels. The concave lid of each has a band that is decorated on the outside and inside with flower garlands. Each lid is topped with a cupid holding a bird. Figures of dancing women with flowing robes are painted on the sides of the vessels. Each vessel has a pair of small lion heads for handles and a pair of lion-paw feet.
Geliere with Pompeian dancer motif, Royal Porcelain Factory of Naples, 1771–1806, painted and gilded porcelain, Museo Nazionale della Ceramica Duca di Martina: S594 and S595. Image © Photographic Archive, National Archaeological Museum of Naples

The dinner service helped broaden the visual repertoire of images from Pompeii, and other European porcelain manufactures, including Wedgwood in England, created ceramics with a similar Pompeian dancer motif.
 
The reception of images from Pompeii and Herculaneum—over time and in different contexts—gradually moved beyond royal control and the emergent disciplines of archaeology and art history to become a source of creative inspiration for artists and artisans. Just as the Romans borrowed stories and compositional schemata from the Greek tradition and adapted them to suit their tastes, so too did later generations take ancient images and refashion them according to the imaginative needs of their own era.

Pompeii Today

Since its rediscovery in the eighteenth century, Pompeii has remained an active site of archaeological research. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century archaeologists built upon the scientific foundations established by Karl Jakob Weber’s systematic attention to the context of finds as much as to the artifacts themselves. An important development in this respect was led by the Italian archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli (1823–1896). After he became the project director at Pompeii, Fiorelli introduced several new techniques that helped preserve everything excavators encountered; his contributions include a system for creating plaster casts of the cavities where long-decomposed human remains had been buried in ash. 

While these plaster casts are now iconic images in the collective popular imagination of Vesuvius’s destructive force, Fiorelli’s most significant innovation for archaeologists and researchers was his numbered address system: each district in Pompeii was assigned a region number, each block within a district was given an “insula” number, and every doorway was identified by its own address. The system allowed for a much clearer description of properties in Pompeii than had been possible, and it remains the standard scholarly nomenclature to this day.

This map of Pompeii includes Fiorelli's address system. Image © Nicodemo Abate

The scale of research at Pompeii has increased substantially since Fiorellei’s era, and now new digital tools—both in the field and from a distance—are currently applied to research of the site. NYU’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) is collaborating with scholars at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to use new digital technologies in a research project designed for twenty-first-century scholars. The Pompeii Artistic Landscape Project, generously funded by the Getty Foundation’s Digital Art History Initiatives, is being developed to present archaeological and art-historical data from Pompeii in a unified digital format. The resource will enable results representing hundreds of years of fieldwork to be searched, mapped, and displayed in an integrated environment. 

Prof. Sebastian Heath (ISAW) and Prof. Eric Poehler (University of Massachusetts Amherst) are focused on the architectural and urban contexts of wall paintings: the project will allow for the site-wide discovery of painted motifs and subjects through searches that integrate the architectural setting with the relation that rooms and buildings have to their neighbors, to the streets, and to the city as a whole. This new way of experiencing the archaeology of Pompeii—in the spirit of both Weber’s interest in contexts and Fiorelli’s precise information architecture—will enable new perspectives, insights, and questions about an ancient site. Unlike the eighteenth-century Bourbon king who jealously guarded access to his collection and sharply restricted the circulation of publications, the Pompeii Artistic Landscape Project is not paywalled and will allow for reuse of open-licensed and standards-based data.
 
The Pompeii Artistic Landscape Project is currently under development, and visitors are welcome to view the work-in-progress here.

ISAW logo
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
New York University
15 East 84th Street, New York, NY 10028
mobile-footer-logo-01