3.08 Filomarino 1794
Ascanio Filomarino, Lettere due sull’eruzione del Vesuvio de’ 15 giugno 1794, Naples 1794
Be 4015-3940 raro IV
Ascanio Filomarino dei Duchi della Torre (1751-1799) was a scientist and intellectual belonging to the Neapolitan nobility. Educated in Rome at the Nazarene College, a leading institution for scientific disciplines in the modern age, from a young age he cultivated a passion for volcanology, which led him to establish fruitful contacts with Italian and European naturalists and academics. He began collecting mineralogical finds and acquiring a specific book collection. A keen observer of the Vesuvian events that took place during the last thirty years of the century, he developed ingenious instruments for detecting seismic tremors in order to predict the next eruptions of the volcano.
The work on display here consists of two letters addressed to an unspecified addressee, in which the author describes in great detail the eruptive event that occurred on 15 June 1794, one of the best recorded by Filomarino. The scholar also deals with this eruption in the compendium Breve descrizione de’ principali incendj del Monte Vesuvio e di molte vedute di essi ora per la prima volta ricavate dagli storici contemporanei, ed esistenti nel Gabinetto del Duca della Torre (Naples 1794). [AM]
