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SDUK / Clarke, William Barnard: : Pompeii

Steel engraving, 33 x 41 cms, engraved by J. & C. Walker after W.B. Clarke, original hand colour, blank verso. Excavations in Pompeii began in the mid eighteenth century, and a substantial part of the ancient city had already been exposed when this map was prepared. Visits to the excavations by Englishmen making the Grand Tour and drawings of “Pompeiian furnishings” helped fuel the late eighteenth-century neoclassical revival. The inset shows the house of Pansa, a vast building which had been subdivided into individual apartments.

The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge was founded in 1826 with the high-minded aim of making 'useful' information available to self-taught members of the working and lower middle classes. Some of the material was decidedly abstruse, subscribers fell away and the Society was wound up in 1848; however, the series of 209 maps published over a 14 year period from 1829 onwards were highly praised for their superior quality, accuracy and aesthetic appeal and remain an outstanding achievement.

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