Map of Italy with Mount Etna and Mount Vesuvius erupting

The artwork

At the bottom left is Mount Etna during the eruption of 1669, a “faithful drawing” according to the caption: the lava flows down to the sea, passing by the castle of Catania, letter D. You receive it printed on handmade Amalfi paper, with a handmade frame.

The eruption began on March 11 above Nicolosi and lasted 122 days. The lava flow buried entire towns and filled the moat of the Ursino Castle in Catania, pushing the shoreline back by several hundred meters. A priest, Diego Pappalardo, tried to stop it: with a team of men protected by wet animal skins, he used pickaxes to cut into the side of the flow, and the lava changed course. But now it was heading toward Paternò, and hundreds of armed men who arrived from Paternò forced them to stop. It is the first documented attempt to divert a lava flow.

The map, “A New Map of Italy,” is by Herman Moll, an engraver and geographer in London, who published it in 1714 and dedicated it to Prince Eugene of Savoy, the general of the Empire. The other two panels show Mount Vesuvius during the eruption of 1631 and a mountain that emits wind rather than fire: Mount Eolo above Cesi, in Umbria, with the caves from which the air emerges. Moll was so well known that Jonathan Swift, in Gulliver’s Travels, has the protagonist call him “my worthy friend.” This print, hand-colored along the borders, is in the David Rumsey Map Collection, which dates it to 1732, the year of Moll’s death.

Above a sofa or along a hallway, it is the gift for anyone who grew up in the shadow of a volcano, in Catania or Naples. And at the bottom left, the 1669 lava flow still flows toward the sea.

Uniquely high-quality materials

Print on handmade Amalfi paper
Sheet size: 40 x 60 cm
With frame: 42 x 62 cm
Material: artwork printed on the finest handmade Amalfi paper with deckle edges
Frame: dark brown with gold fillet, handmade, with glass