PIETRO FABRIS (fl. c.1740-1792)

'INTERIOR VIEW OF ONE OF THE DEEPEST HOLLOW WAYS CUT BY THE TORRENTS OF THE RAIN WATER ON THE FLANKS OF MOUNT VESUVIUS'
Etching with original hand-colouring in watercolour
Plate: 20 x 37.5 cm
 
LITERATURE:
Sir William Hamilton, Campi Phlaegri..., vol. I (1776), pl. XXXIX
 
 
 
 
 
By the time the seminal, lavishly-illustrated first two volumes of the Campi Phlaegri were published in 1776, Sir William Hamilton (1730-1803), the British Envoy to the Bourbon Court at Naples, had already established a reputation as one of Europe's preeminent Volcanologists, following the Royal Society's publication of his 'Observations on Mount Vesuvius' (London, 1772) which ran to three editions in his lifetime. This earlier series of lectures - which were accompanied by original drawings by Fabris, now held by the Society of Antiquaries in London - was adapted and enlarged slightly for the third volume of the 'Campi' published in 1779.
 
 
The 'Campi' was a monumental work by the standards of its time and is now hailed as one of the finest illustrated books of the eighteenth century. The text put forward Hamilton's own radically-advanced theories on volcanic activity, and depicted numerous sites around Naples and nearby Ischia in exacting detail to demonstrate these new ideas. Composed as a bilingual French and English edition, the work is a notable watershed in volcanology, trading biblically-inflected narratives of catastrophe and creation for precise observational description. The artist responsible for the illustrations, Pietro Fabris (Naples, fl.1740-1792), was a talented draughtsman and well-established painter of Neapolitan landscapes and genre scenes, 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). Many of the illustrations include depictions of Hamilton himself, Fabris and, occasionally, Hamilton's (now infamous) wife, Emma.
 
 
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 and today can command more than £100,000 for complete editions.