The Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum

Introduction

The image source is here

This is my story about the artist John Martin.

The Prompt

Write a story inspired by a work of art. Make the artwork your featured image and give credit to the artist in the caption.

You can read about the challenge fully here.

The Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum

John Martin was an epic artist and I have seen his paintings firsthand, some are permanently resident in the Laing Gallery in Newcastle. You can check some of the paintings here

Many of John Martin's paintings are absolutely huge and make you feel as though you can walk straight into them although most of them feature total Armageddon-type destruction and the subject of this story is no exception.

From Wikipedia:

The work appeared to be lost from the Tate Gallery storerooms soon after it was damaged by the 1928 Thames flood, however, it was rediscovered in 1973 and subsequently restored in 2011.

Martin was (unusually) commissioned to paint the subject by Richard Greville, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, who paid 800 guineas. The painting is a monumental canvas 1.6 metres (5 ft 3 in) by 2.5 metres (8 ft 2 in) which depicts a view from Stabiae across the Bay of Naples towards the doomed cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum during the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79.

Standing in front of this you are there, across the bay watching the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum as Vesuvius explodes and showers the towns with molten lava bringing death and destruction.

The smoke and ash from Vesuvius give you the feeling that you are in some monstrous cave in Hell, the reddish colour also makes you feel that you are in the fiery realm of Lucifer.

Although this is a painting, because of the size of it, is diabolically realistic. I could see this in the future being translated into a 3D hologram with movement and sound built in. There are examples of this sort of thing online.

I know many people who have been to Pompeii and Herculaneum and seen the bodies and artefacts frozen from when the lava from Vesuvius burned and buried them. Ironic that they are frozen by the lava that burned them and killed them.

Imagine watching that as though you were on the beach across the bay like the Roman soldiers in the original painting.

These have been represented on film and I suppose seeing this in an IMAX cinema could give you a close to realistic experience of watching the eruption of Vesuvius.

More recent examples are ones such as Krakatoa and Washington. Yellowstone is due to erupt, though hopefully not in our lifetimes but is several thousand years overdue.

Standing in front of this painting you can absolutely lose yourself in looking at the detail. I cannot paint but to create this detail over forty-three square feet of canvas took some amazing skill and dedication, and this was just one of John Martin's creations.

If you look into the painting you can almost feel the blast like the Roman legionnaires, the waves on the bay are frightening and you fear for the ships near the shore. These are the ones who are not being buried in their homes by the infernally hot lava flow.

Take your time to fall into this painting, this is only a representation and a traumatic and frightening real-life event. I do not think that I will ever be in this situation, but I am lucky enough to have seen this painting and stood looking at the elemental destruction that the angry earth can inflict on humanity, and it was captured perfectly by John Martin.