(left: cast of dog and chain from Pompeii, center: portrait of Giuseppe
Fiorelli, right: cast of sitting man from Pompeii, all [Public Domain] via
Creative Commons)
The Roman city of Pompeii began undergoing excavation around
1748, when King Charles VII of Naples (the later Charles III of Spain) decided
to loot the ancient city’s art for his personal collection. Nearly a century
later, the appointment of Giuseppe Fiorelli (1823-1896)—an Italian professor of
archaeology from the University of Naples—as the head of the excavation of
Pompeii, was a healthy change for the looted city.
Fiorelli directed the excavation of Pompeii from 1863-1875.
Although some of his methods remained somewhat primitive and artifact removal,
unfortunately, continued to persist, Giuseppe Fiorelli greatly improved the way
Pompeii was being preserved. He developed several methods that have been
embraced, perfected and enhanced by the next generations of archaeologists that
came after him. For one, Fiorelli disapproved of the excavation system of
digging out the roadways of Pompeii in order to find and excavate ancient buildings
from the street level up. Instead, he found the tops of the structures and
excavated the buildings from the top down to the floor-level. In addition to
these excavation methods, Giuseppe Fiorelli also studied the topography, city
planning and construction of Pompeii. At the end of his term as director of the
Pompeii excavation, he published a book called Descrizione di Pompei (Description
of Pompeii) in 1875. Yet, out of all of Fiorelli’s innovations, one clearly
stands out—the plaster casts of Pompeii.
During his excavations, Giuseppe Fiorelli found that the
decomposing and deteriorating materials from the ruins of Pompeii often left
empty spaces in the ash that buried the ancient city. These cavities served as
natural molds that, when filled with plaster, resulted in statues showing the
dead in their final moments. The same technique could be used to cast wooden
structures, such as beams and stairs, that had rotted away long ago. Unfortunately,
Fiorelli did not clearly document his method for plaster casting, and much of
the process remains a mystery. Researchers do know that he often added iron
rods to provide structure for the casts of human remains—especially in the
casts of large adults. Some casts of children do, however, contain only the
original ancient bones underneath the plaster. Despite the dubious nature of
Giuseppe Fiorelli’s casting techniques, the plaster casts continue to haunt and
inspire viewers to this day, and the evocation of those very emotions is what
the root ‘muse’ is all about in the
word, museum.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
- Pompeii: The Dead Speak. A documentary Published by Smithsonian, 2016.
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/romans/pompeii_rediscovery_01.shtml
- http://www.pompeii.org.uk/s.php/tour-the-plaster-casts-of-fiorelli-history-of-pompeii-en-241-s.htm
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Giuseppe-Fiorelli
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