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Lot Essay
Executed in 1985 as part of a unique series that Warhol made for Lucio Amelio, - a close friend of the artist and celebrated Neapolitan dealer - Vesuvius is Warhol's stylish contribution to a widely popular art historical theme whose origins stems from the eighteenth century.
Warhol uses the famous volcano as an iconic symbol for Amelio's home city of Naples and represents the infamous mountain in garish colours as a dramatic Pop Art image. Warhol's manipulation of Vesuvius into a popular graphic image is in fact a novel twist on what the volcano once represented for many hundreds of European artists who travelled to Naples in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as part of the then fashionable Grand Tour. Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples was at this time a perrenial and highly popular postcard-like subject that adorned thousands of paintings by hundred of artists from anonymous amateurs to reknowned masters such as J. M. W . Turner and Joseph Wright of Derby. Shown erupting in a violent and dramatic explosion, Warhol transforms Vesuvius into a colourful and powerful image of fiery energy that spews forth into a darkened sky. In the present work, this sensation is emphasised by the heightened use of a brillant orange that Warhol has used for the base of the mountain and for the schismatic lines of energy that radiate from its peak and dance across the crimson sky.
Warhol uses the famous volcano as an iconic symbol for Amelio's home city of Naples and represents the infamous mountain in garish colours as a dramatic Pop Art image. Warhol's manipulation of Vesuvius into a popular graphic image is in fact a novel twist on what the volcano once represented for many hundreds of European artists who travelled to Naples in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as part of the then fashionable Grand Tour. Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples was at this time a perrenial and highly popular postcard-like subject that adorned thousands of paintings by hundred of artists from anonymous amateurs to reknowned masters such as J. M. W . Turner and Joseph Wright of Derby. Shown erupting in a violent and dramatic explosion, Warhol transforms Vesuvius into a colourful and powerful image of fiery energy that spews forth into a darkened sky. In the present work, this sensation is emphasised by the heightened use of a brillant orange that Warhol has used for the base of the mountain and for the schismatic lines of energy that radiate from its peak and dance across the crimson sky.