Fausto & Felice Niccolini: Houses and Monuments of Pompeii. 45th Ed.

When the excavations at Pompeii were first placed on ascholarly archaeological footing in the 19th century, brothers Faustoand Felice Niccolini were close at hand and ready to respond. Making useof the newly introduced technique of color lithography, they documented the buildings, frescos, statues, as well as the most ordinary everyday objects,of the city buried in just 24 hours by the catastrophic eruption ofVesuvius and preserved for over 1,600 years under a mantle of volcanicash.

The Niccolinis’ goal was to illustrate all aspects of life in the antique city. Their publication, Le case ed i monumenti di Pompei (“The Houses and Monuments of Pompeii”), which was issued in installments between 1854 and 1896 in Naples, presented over 400 color plates providing not only views, maps, and groundplans of the city and its public buildings, but also offered unprecedented access to Pompeii’s private residences.They revealed the astonishing painted wall decorations that adornedthese long-buried abodes, their intricate works of art, and thepractical utensils of everyday use, conjuring up a vivid picture of eachhouse as a real domestic space. In addition, “animated” representations visualized daily life inPompeii’s workshops, taverns, and shops, on its public squares, and inits temples, theaters, and baths.

This meticulous facsimile revives the Niccolinis’ extraordinaryachievement with selected color plates and two introductory essays settingthe project in its contemporary context and presenting the historicalprotagonists of the Vesuvian excavations. In addition, weexplore the remarkable influence exerted by Pompeian art—and by thehaunting plaster casts made of victims of the eruption—on the visualarts. Across painting, sculpture, and interior design, we tracethe Pompeii legacy in the work of Robert Adam, Anton Raphael Mengs,Angelika Kaufmann, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Lawrence Alma-Tadema,Pablo Picasso, and Giorgio de Chirico, right through to recent mastersDuane Hanson and George Segal.