The Aesthetics and Politics of Volcanoes: William Hamilton’s Campi Phlegraei

Fabris drew, as Hamilton stated, “under my eye, and by my direction” (1776, vol. 1: 5) in nature, on joint excursions. Plates XIII and XXII depict this collaboration in the field: Fabris, in a blue frock coat, sits with his portfolio on his knees; Hamil-ton, in a red frock coat, stands beside him and points out certain features of the surroundings. As an experienced landscape painter, Fabris would have needed no guidance. It was necessary, however, when it came to geological details, to which Hamilton attached particular importance: “The exteriour, and interiour forms of Mount Vesuvius, the Solfaterra, and of every other ancient Volcano in the neigh-bourhood of Naples, are represented faithfully in these Drawings, as are likewise the different specimens of Volcanick matter, such as lava’s, Tufa’s, pumice stones, ashes, sulphurs, salts &c., of which the whole country I have described, is evidently composed” (1776, vol. 1: 5). The illustrations of Campi Phlegraei are thus truly col-laborative productions. They do not only constitute artistic representations of land-scapes, but also geological diagrams.

It is not easy to recognize an artistic composition in the arrangement of the illus-trations. Roughly, the plates of Campi Phlegraei follow the course of the excursions of Hamilton and Fabris. In addition to the numerous excursions on land to Vesu-vius and the region around Naples, they traveled by ship through the Gulf of Naples and the Tyrrhenian Sea, including the islands of Capri (Plate XIII), Nisida (Plate XXII), Procida (Plate XXXII), Ischia (Plate XXX), Ventotene (Plate XXXIV), Sicily and Etna (Plate XXXVI), Stromboli (Plate XXXVII) and the Lipari Islands (Plate I). In addition to this geographic order, the plates are also based on a chronological sequence, in-sofar as Hamilton’s letters designate various points in time between 1766 and 1779. However, the plates and the texts are only loosely linked; the references Hamilton makes to the images in his letters do not follow any obvious structure.

Instead of a clear overall composition, individual sequences can be discerned. The second panel in itself is organized serially: it consists of seven vignettes show-ing the changes of Vesuvius in the course of an eruption in 1767. The panel func-tions like a volcanological picture story and is designed like a comic strip. In its last image, different states of the crater are even superimposed. Instead of a mimetic representation, which otherwise predominates, a diagrammatic modeling comes to the fore here.

The other motifs suggest a certain dramaturgy, too: from morning to night, from spring to winter, from calm to eruption (plates III–VI). Plates II and III of the supplementary volume also represent a day-and-night duo, insofar as they show the eruption of Vesuvius lasting over a longer period of time from a very similar point of view, once in daylight and once in darkness, in each case with a group of people in the foreground and the bay in the middle ground. In other cases, two successive illustrations form a matching pair: plates III and IIII as well as plates XXXand XXXI each depict a scene – Naples, Ischia – from opposite perspectives. In film, such a sequence would be called a shot-reverse-shot montage. It creates a 360-degree panorama, a diptych as an all-round view.