The Vesuvius exhibition is open at the Baltika reading room of the TLU AL until 31 March 2025. The reading room is open Monday to Friday from 12:00 to 17:00.
The 18th century was a time when interest in geology grew across Europe. Special attention was paid to geological formations in Europe that were more “accessible.” Just as the Alps became the “model site” for studying mountain ranges and sedimentary rocks, Mount Vesuvius, located on the shores of the Bay of Naples (alongside Mount Etna in Sicily), became a key site for exploring volcanic rocks and volcanism. This was largely due to the fact that, starting in 1631, Vesuvius entered a phase of activity that continued with varying intensity until 1944. During this period, several powerful eruptions occurred. None were as catastrophic as the eruption of AD 79, which destroyed the cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae. However, every eruption seemed to echo that ancient disaster. Excavations at Pompeii began in 1748 and have been conducted with increasing intensity ever since.
It is no surprise that 18th- and 19th-century scholars often combined different areas of interest. For example, William Hamilton (1730–1803), who served as the British envoy in Naples, the capital of the so-called “Kingdom of the Two Sicilies,” actively collected local Greek and Roman antiquities, which later became part of the British Museum’s collection. He was also fascinated by Vesuvius—Hamilton published several books on the volcano, which were almost immediately translated into other European languages. In our exhibition, two of his works translated into German (1773 and 1787) are displayed.
Naturally, local scholars were also intrigued by Vesuvius. Francesco Serao (1792–1783) published a study of Vesuvius in the 1730s, and its English translation (1743) is also held in our library. Similarly, Giovanni Maria Della Torre (1710–1782), a local priest, documented over 20 years of observations in a book that was translated into German in 1783.
Residents of Estonia and Livonia who travelled through Italy also wrote about Vesuvius. For instance, August v. Kotzebue (1761–1819) noted in his description of a trip to Italy (1805) that the two main attractions of the Kingdom of Naples were Vesuvius and the ruins of Pompeii. Karl Morgenstern (1770–1852), during his 1809 journey, also paid attention to Vesuvius, although his primary interest was, of course, Pompeii.
The journeys of Kotzebue and Morgenstern can largely be described as tourist trips. It could even be said that the 19th century saw the emergence of a “tourism industry,” with souvenirs, including drawings, becoming an integral part of the experience. Our exhibition includes three such gouache paintings. We do not know exactly when or how these drawings arrived in our library. Regarding the artist, we can only deduce from the inscriptions on the works that his name was M. Mauton, and his address in Naples was Strada San Carlo No. 32. Two of the pieces are precisely dated, as they depict volcanic activity on 22 October 1832 and 2 June 1833. It is also worth noting that the eruptions of Vesuvius during the 1820s and 1830s inspired Karl Brüllov (1799–1852), whose painting “The Last Day of Pompeii” contributed to the publication of Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s (1803–1873) famous novel of the same name in 1834.
