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

Most clearly, the rock samples at the end of the volumes form a coherent group (plates XXXXII to LIIII as well as plates IIII and V of the supplementary volume). The depictions in nature are followed by samples of stones, carefully arranged, as in a natural history cabinet. This series of pictures represents the geological collec-tions that Hamilton sent to the Royal Society. With great precision, the artist captures not only the color of the rocks and minerals, but also their texture, so that even today a geologist can identify them. This painted collection is the end of a pro-cess: nature is first observed in the field and then explored in the museum – and finally depicted in the book.

What are the aesthetics of Fabris’s paintings? They stand in a double tradition of landscape representation: on the one hand, picturesque views of bays and towns in the form of conventional vedute in friendly colors; on the other hand, dramatic scenes of overwhelming nature in the form of rugged mountains, inhospitable gla-ciers, or stormy seas. Occasionally, an early Romantic perception appears, for exam-ple in a dreary winter landscape with dark ruins (Plate V), which seems to anticipate the gothic aesthetic of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The scenarios seem beautiful and sublime, pleasing and frightening – and at times also eerie.

Fabris has combined both forms of representation, the beautiful and the sub-lime, in different ways. We see an idyllic scene in the foreground, while in the background, more or less threatening, a smoking volcano rises. Or we see figures watching an eruption from a safe distance, from the other shore of a bay, while in between sailboats pass by in calm seas. Fabris often combines the picturesque and the sublime modes in one and the same image. By conveying the beauty of the Campanian landscape and the horrors of volcanic destruction, his panels condense Hamilton’s most important observation: that volcanic activity is not only destructive but also creative. Paradoxically, the fertility of the region, which is visible in the lush vegetation in many of the illustrations, is a result of volcanic devastation.

The images have a scientific perspective. They are intended not only to depict the landscape and the volcanoes, but also to make them accessible for research. Guided by Hamilton, Fabris drew with a geological eye the structure of the rock, the position of its layers, the sequence of eruptions and the course of the lava, as well as the changes in the mountain shapes.