Album of Pompeiian frescoes

Album of 55 exquisitely colored lithographs and watercolor drawings in the style of Pompeiian frescoes.

• [Italian?]: circa 1850.
• Each plate is tipped to a larger sheet.
• Two are entirely uncolored, another only partially.
• Folio.
• Bound together in three-quarter red morocco by Pawson & Nicholson, Philadelphia, with their ticket.
• Rebacked in goatskin, original spine laid down, inner hinges reinforced with period cloth.

A superb collection of lovely lithographed images which, in many instances are so delicately and minutely colored as to be indistinguishable from watercolor drawings — and indeed, several of them we believe to be entirely original drawings — each in the style of the ancient art of Pompeii in its frescoes, geometric mosaics, and ceramics. There are scenes of mythological figures (e.g., a satyr cavorting with a goat), scenes of purely decorative nature, suggestive of Pompeian vase art against a black gloss background, domestic scenes of husband, wife, and children, cupids; pastoral scenes, fish and game, and several images of an openly erotic nature suggestive of the relaxed style of Pompeiian attitudes toward nudity.