Giovan Battista Lusieri

Anonymous sale, London, Replica Shoes ’s, 15 March 1989, lot 178;

Private collection, Naples;

Anonymous sale, Naples, Blindarte, 12 December 2010, lot 183;

Acquired subsequently by the present owner.

Naples, Castel Sant'Elmo, All'ombra del Vesuvio. Napoli nella veduta europea dal Quattrocento all'Ottocento, 12 May – 29 July 1990.

N. Spinosa and L. Di Mauro, Le vedute napoletane del Settecento, Naples 1989, p. 203, under no. 186;

R. Muzii, in All'ombra del Vesuvio. Napoli nella veduta europea dal Quattrocento all'Ottocento, S. Cassani (ed.)., exh. cat., Naples 1990, pp. 298, 407–408, reproduced;

F. Spirito, Lusieri, Naples 2003, pp. 78 and 132, no. 41, reproduced in colour;

A. Weston-Lewis, Giovanni Battista Lusieri and the Panoramique Landscape, exh. cat., Edinburgh 2012, pp. 20–21, reproduced in colour fig. 15.

Lusieri produced a good number of sketches and watercolours recording the volcanic activities of Vesuvius, from various viewpoints.

Many were drawn by moonlight producing romantic and poetic views, as the present watercolour. Sixteen of them bear dating from the 12 June 1789 to 10 June 1794.

Lusieri a native Roman artist, arrived in Naples at the end of 1781 or at the very beginning of 1782, financed by Philip Yorke who had commissioned the artist to paint some unspecified views of Naples.

Two of the most dramatic eruptions occurred when the artist was in Naples, in 1787 and 1794. In December 1792 and January 1793, Vesuvius also rumbled into activity. The present moonlight view of Mount Vesuvius bears the date of 1793. Aidan Weston Lewis mentions four pencil drawings in the Earl of Elgin and Kincardine collection, three of them dated respectively 25 December 1792 and 3 and 4 January 1793 documenting phases of this same eruption represented in this watercolour.¹      

These sophisticated drawings of spectacular phenomena, executed in in watercolour were drawn by Lusieri with a magical tough detached observation, somehow freed of drama.

¹ See Literature, Weston-Lewis, loc. cit., fig. 14 and p. 233, note 41