La baie de Naples ("The Bay of Naples"), 1820, by Jean-Joseph-Xavier Bidault

At the Academy of Painting, the Grand Prix de Rome for "Historical Landscape" was created in 1816, at the instigation of painters Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson (1767-1824) and Pierre-Henri Valenciennes (1750-1819). It was held every four years until 1863, when it was discontinued. Winners had to meet the Academy's requirements in terms of pictorial treatment, composition and lighting effects for the mythological or religious subject justifying the presence of the landscape. The painter Jean-Joseph-Xavier Bidault played a full part in promoting the genre, and in this canvas delivers a perfect example of historical landscape.

The subject matter is, so to speak, "burning", since the volcano erupted several times in the second half of the 18th century, but Jean-Joseph-Xavier Bidault also refers to Pliny the Elder, who witnessed the first eruption, and to the historical facts reported by his nephew, Pliny the Younger. This composition blends two levels of reading: contemporary and scholarly.

Contemporary reading is essential, and this painting must be seen in the context of the profusion of writings on the eruptions of Vesuvius and the genuine fascination it produces among writers, art lovers and naturalists. After the great eruption of Vesuvius in 1779, highly symbolic since it occurred 1,700 years after the one that destroyed Pompeii in 79, an even more terrible eruption occurred in 1794: after a powerful explosion of ash in the crater, a large fissure opened up on one of the volcano's flanks, destroying part of the Torre del Greco municipality. The volcano erupted again in 1806.

Chateaubriand had been climbing Vesuvius since 1804, and his account appeared in part in the Mercure de France in July 1806, then definitively in the Voyage en Italie published in 1827. By the time Chateaubriand visited Naples, the excursion to Vesuvius had gone from being an archaeological curiosity to an adventure day out, as the cone covered in lapilli and ashes was like "burning sand", as Jérôme de Lalande put it. For Châteaubriand, the ascent of Vesuvius, an obligatory part of any trip to Italy and a traditional subject of narrative, is an opportunity to meditate on history and memory, as in Bidault's painting, highlighting the anxiety of families, women, children and the elderly, waiting for a boat to escape the disaster.

This image of Vesuvius is the antithesis of the enchanting, incandescent volcanoes of painter Pierre-Jacques Volaire, or of literary descriptions magnifying the eruptive phenomenon. For the Marquis de Sade, Vesuvius is an erotic eruption of stones (Œuvres, t. 3, Paris, Gallimard, 1998, Histoire de Juliette, p. 1102). For Charles Dupaty, it provokes "ecstasy. This desert! This height! This night! This flaming mountain! And I was there." (Lettres sur l'Italie, en 1785, t. 1, Paris, Froment, 1827, pp. 58-59). The painter Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun marveled at the "cascade of fire" (Souvenirs de Madame Louise-Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, t. 2, Paris, Fournier, 1835, p. 107), while Madame de Staël enthused about "the river of fire" in Corinne (Livre ix, Chap. iii, 1807), struck by her ascent of Vesuvius in 1807.

The choice of depicting an eruption of Vesuvius from the Bay of Naples was a common one among Neapolitan painters, who supplied tourists with souvenir paintings of a recurring event in the second half of the 18th century and the early 19th century, and the painter's composition refers in this sense to current events. For the more literate viewer, Jean-Joseph-Xavier Bidault's work also evokes, beyond the gouaches of Vesuvius brought back in mass from the trip to Italy, the death of Pliny the Elder through the figures in the foreground, waiting for a boat to rescue them, even if they are not dressed in antique style.

On August 24, 79 A.D., at the other end of the Bay of Naples, the inhabitants of Misene discovered a column of ashes shooting skyward. Pliny the Elder, a military man turned administrator and naturalist, spotted the column of smoke and boarded a small boat to study the phenomenon up close. Following desperate messages from Pompeii, he decided to send twelve ships to the rescue of the threatened inhabitants, having been rewarded by being appointed head of the imperial fleet based at Misene.

Thirty years later, his nephew, Pliny the Younger, recounted the day's events at the request of the historian Tacitus: "He [Pliny the Elder] rushed to the place where the others were fleeing, ran straight into the danger, kept his course in that direction and, far from giving in to fear, dictated and noted the evolution and various aspects of the catastrophe himself as he made his observations". The boats approached the shore, where the inhabitants of Pompeii were massing, but the sea was already clogged with pieces of rock expelled by the crater, and Pliny had to withdraw a little further south, thinking of finding refuge in Stabies.

During the night, the eruptive column rose, driven by gas pressure, before collapsing abruptly, triggering a fiery cloud. A pyroclastic flow first buried Herculaneum and at sunrise, Pliny discovered the apocalypse: Pompeii was covered in pumice stone, trapping those who had been unable to leave in time. In the morning, another pyroclastic flow swept through Stabies. Pliny tried to escape by sea, but was overtaken by clouds of toxic gas. "Then the flames, which seemed to grow larger, and the smell of sulfur, which announced their approach, put everyone to flight. He got up, supported by two valets, and in a moment fell dead", Pliny the Younger relates.

Marie-Madeleine Aubrun, « La tradition du paysage historique et le paysage naturaliste dans la première moitié du xixe siècle français », L’Information d’histoire de l’art, n^o 2, 1968, p. 63-72.

Anna Ottani Cavina, Paysages d’Italie, les peintres du plein air, Paris, RMN, 2001.

Suzanne Gutwirth, « Jean-Joseph Bidauld. Une sensibilité néoclassique », Jean-Joseph-Xavier Bidauld (1758-1846). Peintures et dessins, cat. exp. Carpentras, musée Duplessis ; Angers, musée des Beaux-Arts ; Cherbourg, musée Thomas-Henry, 1978, Nantes, imp. Chiffoleau, 1978.

Désiré Raoul-Rochette, « Notice historique sur la vie et les ouvrages de M. Bidault », 6 octobre 1849, Procès-verbaux de l’Académie des beaux-arts, 1845-1849, Paris, École des Chartes, 2008, t. VIII, p. 456-457.