4.07 Monticelli-Covelli 1823
Teodoro Monticelli e Nicola Covelli, Storia de’ fenomeni del Vesuvio avvenuti negli anni 1821, 1822 e parte del 1823, con osservazioni e sperimenti, Naples 1823
Be 4015-4230 raro IV
Teodoro Monticelli and his pupil Nicola Covelli were the most important scholars of Vesuvian mineralogy at the transition between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Their Prodromo alla Mineralogia Vesuviana (1825) represents the main contribution to this science before Arcangelo Scacchi’s research that led to the establishment of the “Vesuvian Collection” at the Real Museo Mineralogico of Naples. The work on display gives an account of their observations on the activity of Vesuvius over a three-year period, between 1821 and 1823. Unlike the numerous extrusive eruptions that had characterised the previous decades, the October 1822 eruption was a violent explosive eruption that left significant traces in science, anthropology and even art. The text is organised in three sections, respectively dedicated to the observations in 1821, the diary of the 1822 eruption, and the observations and experiments conducted during this eruption. It is accompanied by four lithographic plates: the first shows the state of the mountain before the event; the second plate, missing from the Bibliotheca Hertziana copy on display, is a night view of the volcano in full eruption; the third shows the volcano as seen from the village of Boscotrecase; and the last, finally, depicts the crater in its post-eruption state. [ES]
