PIETRO FABRIS (fl.1740-1792)

THE EXCAVATION OF THE TEMPLE OF ISIS, POMPEII
Titled in pen & ink u.m. (see fig. III above), further inscribed with references to Sir William Hamilton's illustrations & additional notes
Watercolour and pen and grey ink, partly with preliminary drawing in pencil, on wove, laid down on laid paper. 
22.2 x 34.2 cm 
 
PROVENANCE
Private collection, Heidelberg
 
LITERATURE & BIBLIOGRAPHY
(See section below)
 
EXHIBITED:
Hamburg, Hamburger Kunsthalle Entfesselte Natur. Das Bild der Katastrophe seit 1600, 2018, cat. no. 98
 
 
 
We are grateful to both Dr Kim Sloan and Dr Iain Gordon Brown for assisting in the cataloguing of this work. 
 
 
The present sheet is one of the most thrilling original depictions of the early excavations of Pompeii to come to light in recent years: a premiere pensée for a print in the seminal Campi Phelgraei, it shows both tourists and labourers standing in the rubble of the emergent Temple of Isis, one of the first ruins to be discovered at the beginning of the Pompeiian excavations in 1764. S
 
 
The present sheet is one of the most thrilling original depictions of the early excavations of Pompeii to come to light in recent years: a premiere pensée - and one of fewer than a handful to appear on the art market for more than two decades - for one of the prints in the seminal Campi Phelgraei, it shows both tourists and labourers standing in the rubble of the emergent Temple of Isis, one of the first ruins to be discovered at the beginning of the Pompeiian excavations in 1764. Sir William Hamilton (1730-1803), who had been appointed British Envoy Extraordinary to the Kingdom of Naples in the same year, was one of, if not the keenest observer of the excavations. His activities as an antiquarian, collector and volcanologist are today well-known, but few subjects in the extraordinary series of views around Naples and Vesuvius - the Campi Phelgraei - combine all three of Hamilton's passions so concisely: the legendary eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD, that recorded in Pliny the Younger's eyewitness account, buried almost the entire Temple for the following 1685 years, preserving beneath ash much of one of the most important loci of the Cult of Isis in Italy. 
 
 
The excavations began in 1764 under the direction of Karl Jacob Weber and, on the 20th July 1765, Francisco la Vega transcribed the inscription that identified this particular temple as having been dedicated to the Egyptian goddess. Shortly after this, Hamilton sent the artist Pietro Fabris to the Temple. Thankfully for historians today, Hamilton did not want Fabris to create romanticised depictions but instead to record with an almost scientific eye precisely what he saw there, so that this record could then be disseminated as part of the broader study of Naples, Vesuvius and the local topography that occupied Hamilton for much of his time in post. 
 
Hamilton's concern for verisimilitude in Fabris' paintings echoes his worries about the execution of the excavations themselves, which were being overseen with almost total apathy, with the Temple and other sites left unprotected from cynical, brazen robbers and inexpert workmen demolishing entire buildings and artefacts. Hamilton was so aghast at the ongoings that he intervened, imploring Bernardo Tannucci, the Neapolitan Prime Minister to rectify the situation. His influence came not a moment too soon, as the Prime Minister at last instructed that no workmen could take what they found, and that the practice of 'back-filling' (simply pouring the earth dug up back once any ancient chattels or artwork had been seized) be prohibited, so as to preserve the sites for future visitors. 
 
The letters inscribed throughout this drawing are much the same as the system employed in Fabris' earlier studies of Pompeii, a number of which now belong to the Society of Antiquaries of London (see figs. I & II above for examples). Hamilton sent these drawings by Fabris to the Society in order to illustrate his account of the excavations, which was read aloud at a series of meetings and subsequently published in their Journal. When the present work was published in the Campi, it was accompanied by the text seen below (fig. III), which acted as a key to Fabris' notations. That the inscription to the upper margin of our sheet is in French is no surprise, as the Campi were composed as bilingual editions, likely as a mark of respect to the Bourbon Dynasty who then controlled Naples.
 
 
 
The discovery of the Temple of Isis contributed to the 'Egyptomania' that gradually swept over Europe in the latter decades of the 18th century and continued all the way up to Carter and the discovery of the Valley of the Kings.