The focus of this book is the profound link between Pompeii, whose image very soon became an icon of Antiquity, its cultural fortune and the numerous emotional and esthetic values that Art has portrayed over the centuries, in an effort to revive the story of the Roman town so tragically and suddenly cut short.
The publication of a great deal of carefully researched, unpublished material from various collections in Italy and abroad helps the book to make a diachronic analysis of writers (some better known than others) and phenomena, putting them into their historical context, also by comparing what they describe to similar experience recorded by other authors in Rome. The book includes: early daguerreotypes of the excavations at Pompeii, almost a figurative transcription of engravers’ prints; the first calotypes of views resulting from the almost immediate need of publishers to spread knowledge about the site and the treasures which were being uncovered; photographs ‘touched up’ with water color; the auxiliary function of photographs taken in the 19th century of buildings, decoration, sculpture and other objects, with a view to reconstructing the Ancient world in academic painting and a European Pompeii style, also in terms of architecture until the onset of Fascism; picture postcards sold at the site, the presence at Pompeii of all the main Italian photographic companies (Alinari, Brogi, Vasari, Chauffourier) equipped with the most up-to-date equipment, highlighting different areas of expertise and differences in how they specially prepared their sets; the ruins of Pompeii as a creative background for writers like von Gloeden and Plüschow, who knew how to ‘populate’ them, bringing them alive in suggestive mental images laden with meaning; the more recent dichotomy between documentary photography based on scientific criteria, a growing amount of photography aimed at tourism, and the decidedly authoritative photography of the greatest masters of contemporary photography.