PRESUHN, Emil.

£2,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Pompeji: die Neuesten Ausgrabungen von 1874 bis 1881 für Kunst-und-Alterhumfreunde. Second edition, improved and enlarged, of this superbly illustrated and important study; first published in 1878 and again in 1882. Scarce, one copy only among British and Irish institutional libraries (V&A); WorldCat adds just three more (Strasbourg, Erlangen, Sachsiche Landesbibliothek). The German archaeologist Emil Presuhn (1844-1881), described in his preface as schuldirektor (headmaster) at Coburg, Duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, spent eight years in Italy, mainly at the excavations at Pompeii. His popular illustrated work on the frescoes, Die pompejanischen Wanddecorationen (Leipzig: Weigel, 1877), was published in Italian, French and English editions. He notes here that since the publication of the first edition, which included 60 plates only, "such remarkable and curious finds have been made again and again" that the addition of twenty plates to this second edition "hardly corresponds to the wealth and significance of the last excavations". However, while celebrating the discovery of so many startling finds Presuhn adopts the rather modern view that exposure of the site is "in a sense a second destruction of the city". He mentions the urgency of the work of recording the Roman frescoes - once exposed some "have a duration of only a few days" - and that "in vain one advises on means of conservation". Remarking that both the Italian government and German research teams employ artists to

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