INTRODUCTION TO THE WORK OF ADRIANA PIGNATELLI MANGONI

Adriana Pignatelli Mangoni is the author of an extraordinary artistic and literary work on the Vesuvius and the Magna Grecia volcanoes that spans 25 years, during which she revisited their discovery during the Enlightenment age and the Grand Tour between Illuminism and Romanticism.
Her work consists of more than 700 gouaches, all painted by means of historical techniques, and can be divided in three parts:

1. The dawn of modern volcanology in France, during the Enlightenment age, in Auvergne, between Velay and Vivarais (under the form of ex voto, as a thanksgiving for the transformation of volcanism from source of terror to source of scientific knowledge);
2. The travel and the European travelers to Vesuvius and the Southern Italy volcanoes, at the end of the XVIII century, at the beginning of the scientific interpretation of volcanism (under the form of gouaches, 45th of them dedicated to the travel of the Abbé De Saint Non);
3. A modern lecture (revisitation – “Mon Tetit Tour”) of the same sites, through 108 gouaches, in particular of the Vesuvius and the Phlegrean Fields. Here the Artist captures the tension that permeated the original images of the XVIII-XIX century.

Among all these paintings, interpreted and inserted in a historical context, the part related to the Vesuvius is very wide and consists of a series of introductory billboards displaying the Vesuvius and the Phlegrean Fields as they appear in the ancient literature (from Strabone to Plinius), 36 gouaches inspired to Hamilton and Fabris, three dedicated to Voltaire, one to Saint Gennaro (protector of Naples) with the comment of Goethe.
This work – strongly characterized by the cultural intertwinement between images and interpretation of their semiology – has already been exhibited in the last six years in Los Angeles, New York, Naples (at Castello di Baia and at the University Suor Orsola Benincasa), Lipari (sponsored by UNESCO), in Paris (Château de Maison Lafitte, La Garenne, Lemot) in Berlin, Hamburg and Flensburg.
Agreements have been made for exhibitions in Münster, Copenhagen, Barcelona, Madrid and at La Martinique, while the Italian Cultural Institutes of New York and Chicago have just invited the Artist to bring her work in these two cities.

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