Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Image not available - no digital rights
(non-existent) surrounding the volcano, and that a tidy viewing
platform had been set up.
Volcanoes, with their extraordinary physical power and as
yet not fully understood dynamics, were ripe settings for satire,
as the artists of political prints had long discovered. For comic or
satirical intent the metaphor of the volcano became common.
James Gillray used it in 1794 to depict the uncontrollable terrors
of the French Revolution. During that year alone over 15,000
people were guillotined in France. Gillray shows the head of
Charles James Fox, the radical English politician, being carried,
like the head of St Januarius, in procession around the Vesuvius
as if it were the only charm that could possibly staunch the moun-
tain. The bearers are Tory politicians, dressed as revolutionary
sans-culottes
, who are using their political foe as a talisman to stop
the political eruption in France that threatens to destroy London,
Vienna, Berlin, Rome, Flanders and Holland - all depicted
symbolically in the engraving.4ยน
Anonymous,
Eruption
of Icelandic Volcano
,
early 18th century,
oil on canvas.
Anonymous,
Eruption
of Icelandic Volcano
,
early 18th century,
oil on canvas.
Anonymous,
Eruption
of Hekla, Iceland
, late
18th century, gouache.
