Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples from a Cave (1820): Art, History and Details

Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples from a Cave (1820) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Adolf von Heydeck (German, 1787–1856).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Adolf von Heydeck worked in Rome and later traveled south to Naples. This drawing presents that city’s most distinctive attraction: Mount Vesuvius, an active volcano that appears against an otherwise calm sky. Von Heydeck portrayed the scene from within a cave interior, contrasting the potentially overwhelming force of nature with the illusion of protection offered by distance and enclosed space.

Object facts

• Title: Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples from a Cave
• Date: 1820
• Creator attribution: Adolf von Heydeck (German, 1787–1856)
• Culture: Germany, 19th century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: watercolor with graphite; framing lines in pen and black ink
• Dimensions: Sheet: 26.9 x 37.9 cm (10 9/16 x 14 15/16 in.); Secondary Support: 27.5 x 37.9 cm (10 13/16 x 14 15/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - German
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1968.69

A detail from the museum

Mount Vesuvius was almost continuously active at the time that Adolf von Heydeck visited Naples, and erupted just two years after this drawing was completed.

Collection credit

Gift of the John B. Putnam Foundation

Further reading listed by the museum

• Catalog der von Herrn Adolf von Heydeck... Leipzig: J.B. Hirschfeld, 1857.
• Porzio, Annalisa and Marina Causa Picone. Goethe e i suoi interlocutori. Exh. Cat. Naples: Palazzo Reale, 1983.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.