Stay updated with breaking news from Henry blundell. Get real-time updates on events, politics, business, and more. Visit us for reliable news and exclusive interviews.
How Pierre-Jacques Volaire perched his viewers on the rim of Vesuvius Volaire witnessed most of the major volcanic events of the second half of the 18th century and, in his paintings, he made Vesuvius his own. Mount Vesuvius had a busy 18th century, with some six major eruptions and near continuous growlings and spurtings. This restlessness and the immanence of danger it signified made the volcano an object of fascination to the European mind. With the Enlightenment, it also became a symbol of two different attitudes: for those with a religious cast, Vesuvius was an example of divine power and possible retribution, with the potential to unleash a catastrophe analogous to the biblical flood; while for the new thinkers it was both an emblem of nature’s potency and an opportunity for scientific inquiry. ....