Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
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imagery became the foundation of the popular perception of
volcanoes in the nineteenth century, while Scrope's and Lyell's
scientific responses needed more time to grow.
In the meantime artists had a field day with the subject.
Following in the footsteps of Briullov, and catching the viral
inspiration of the theme of the final days of Pompeii from both
the Russian artist and from Bulwer Lytton, the French painter
Frédéric-Henri Schopin (1804-1880) completed his
Last Days
of Pompeii
around 1850. On a much smaller scale than Briullov,
but sharing the staggering and the tumbling that Pushkin
identified, we have here a metaphor for the collapse of a civi-
lization, revealed in all its horror in a disorienting hellish light.
And well may Schopin allude to the collapse of civilization,
living as he did in France in the late 1840s. A new and bloody
revolution was sweeping across Europe, removing kings, unset-
tling emperors, changing the very face of democracy and
prompting the well-travelled historian Alexis de Tocqueville to
say in the last session of the constitutional parliament in the
French Chamber of Deputies in 1848: 'we are slumbering on
a volcano'.
Frédéric-Henri Schopin,
Last Days of Pompeii
,
c.
1850, oil on canvas.
