Featured on PDR in the collection Peter Fabris’ Illustrations for William Hamilton’s Campi Phlegraei (1776–79)

A British diplomat serving as Envoy Extraordinary to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, William Hamilton (1730–1803) spent a large part of his life in Naples — observing volcanic activity, collecting antiquities, and shepherding adventurous travelers, including kings and queens, to the summit of magma-rich mountains. Present for the eruptions of Mount Vesuvius during the mid-to-late eighteenth century, Hamilton wrote Campi Phlegraei in two parts, with a tertiary supplement, based on his Observations on Mount Vesuvius (1772) for the Royal Society. Composed as a bilingual French and English edition, the work is a notable watershed in volcanology, trading biblically-inflected narratives of catastrophe and creation for precise observational description. To illustrate these volumes in a manner true to his approach, Hamilton recruited the English-born Neapolitan artist…