Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 2 of 3)Spooner, Shearjashub
History
Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 2 of 3)
Spooner, Shearjashub
Art -- Anecdotes; Artists -- Anecdotes
"Pompeii is so perfectly unique in its kind, that I flatter myself a
rather minute description of the state in which I saw it, will not be
uninteresting. The streets, with the exception of the principal one,
which is about thirty-three feet wide, are very narrow. They are paved
with blocks of lava, and have raised side-walks for pedestrians, things
very rare in modern Europe. At the corners of the streets are fountains,
and also stepping-stones for crossing. The furrows worn by the carriage
wheels are strongly marked, and are not more than forty-four inches
apart, thus giving us the width of their vehicles.
"The houses in general are built with small red bricks, or with volcanic
matter from Vesuvius, and are only one or two stories high. The marble
counters remain in many of the stores, and the numbers, names of the
occupiers, and their occupations, still appear in red letters on the
outside. The names of Julius, Marius, Lucius, and many others, only
familiar to us through the medium of our classic studies, and fraught
with heroic ideas, we here see associated with the retailing of oil,
olives, bread, apothecaries' wares, and nearly all the various articles
usually found in the trading part of Italian cities even at the present
day. All the trades, followed in these various edifices, were likewise
distinctly marked by the utensils found in them; but the greater part of
these, as discovered, were removed for their better preservation to the
great Museum at Naples; a measure perhaps indispensable, but which
detracts in some degree from the local interest. We see, however, in the
magazine of the oil merchant, his jars in perfect order, in the
bakehouse are the hand mills in their original places, and of a
description which exactly tallies with those alluded to in holy writ;
the ovens scarcely want repairs; where a sculptor worked, there we find
his marbles and his productions, in various states of forwardness, just
as he left them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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