Ercolano e Pompei: visioni di una scoperta

Inauguration: Saturday 24.02.2018, 4.30 p.m.

Exhibition curated by: Pietro Giovanni Guzzo, Maria Rosaria Esposito, Nicoletta Ossanna Cavadini

The 280th anniversary of the discovery of Herculaneum and the 270th anniversary of that of Pompeii are here celebrated with a completely original approach, by exploring the media and the methods with which the discoveries of the two sites were communicated through the visionary expressions of those who immediately intuited the implications of the discoveries and sought to promote the progress of the excavations and research into them.

From the late eighteenth century to the early twentieth, from Goethe to Stendhal, William Gell, Giovanni Battista and Francesco Piranesi, and many drafters, engravers and lovers of antiquity down to the Alinari brothers, this is an account of the passion for the excavations and precious archaeological finds, and the desire to make known the discoveries through letters, hand-coloured sketchbooks, engravings, lithographs, drawings, reliefs, copperplates and gouaches, the first postcards and daguerreotype photographs.

The exhibition is organised in close partnership with the National Museum of Archaeology in Naples, which will present the second stage of the integrated project in the summer of 2018.