Pompeya imaginadala pintura española de tema pompeyano de los siglos XVIII y XIX

Abstract

Since the discovery of Pompeii and the other sites of the Vesuvian region in the eighteenth century, the majority of studies ha' e been focused on the analysis of the material culture and on the history of its excavations. In the last decade, however. the impact that such discoveries bad on the vast public has been investigated in detail to get a better understanding of the phenomenon known as "Pompeii in the Public Imagination". Special attention has been paid to three schools of artists focused on the Vesuvian area: the French, the British and the Italian painting schools. Based in this fact, some questions about the case of Spain arise in terms of the existence of such Spanish artists, as well as about the Spanish presence in the cultural European phenomena of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Dealing with the Vesuvian region, recent studies focused on the Spanish case have paid attention to Spanish architects, artists, writers or politicians who visited Pompeii. Nevertheless, the presence of such papers in the interactional scientific community is still scarce. This is why we consider an exhaustive study about the milieus artistically represented and their relationship with the archaeological excavations could contribute to get a better understanding of the impact of such discoveries in the Spanish public imagination through paintings. This article aims to approach this subject through some Spanish artists, considering both real and ideal contexts, initially, the international panorama will be concisely analyzed, paying attention to the political, social and cultural background in which Spanish paintings were created and reviewing some aspects of the Grand Tour phenomenon, as well as the many travels to Italy carried out as a consequence. Afterwards, Spanish paintings and artists will be subsequently studied, comparing these works with other creations from different European schools and countries, as long as it can be interesting or even possible. Moreover, we will carefully analyze the production and specific circumstances of the main painters of the Spanish eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who were to visit the surrounding of Naples and depicted in their notebooks and canvasses all kinds of views, environments and situations (more or less imagined) of Pompeian inspiration. These creations, so called "pompeyistas" (which we could translate for 'pompeiist') among the an historians and experts of this genre of paintings, were very often linked to the institutional context of the Academia Española de Bellas Artes de Roma (Spanish Academy of Fine Arts at Rome), to which many of these works were devoted and conceived as "assessments" by the different artists who held grants at the renowned institution throughout its history. However, as we will see, frequently they went beyond the limits and the doors of the Academy and ended by being well-known for the vast public and awarded with many important prizes. Conclusions will be drawn as we try to consider the particular characteristics of the Spanish case and the differences between this Spanish school and the rest of european artistic backgrounds. At last resort, this article aims to be a starting point for further studies and to open new possibilities to think about the history of the reception of Antiquity.