I titled this painting “Furor” and it’s one of my latest painting  a 22 x 28 oil on canvas available both the original and the printed version on my website here: PIAZZA FINE ART.

I wanted to paint it as tribute to a Volcano that has impacted history and imagination like no other and that most likely will do it again in a near future. Experts are predicting a massive eruption very soon, probably of the same intensity of the one in 79 AC. Millions of people lives on the foothill of this volcano, if precautions and good sense will not prevail (many resident have repeatedly stated that they will never abandon their family homes passed from generation to generation) the catastrophe will be of unimaginable proportions

I  have a personal attachment to mount Vesuvius, I lived from when I was a child until I became a teenager in a couple of these cities build on the foothill of Mount Vesuvius, which both were seriously damaged  in the  past by the volcano’s fury.

One of this city is,  San Giorgio a Cremano, the name “San Giorgio a Cremano” (literally “Saint George of the Cremated”), is a reference to the reverence with which the residents of the area in the 10th century held for the Vesuvius. The superstitious and devoutly religious locals saw an analogy between the eruptions of Vesuvius, and a dragon breathing fire, and quickly adopted Saint George as their patron saint, due to the legend of Saint George and the Dragon in which he slays the Dragon. The residents believed by adopting Saint George as their patron saint he would protect them from the ‘dragon’ or the eruptions of Vesuvius.

The term “Cremano” is an ancient name for a strip of land between Portici and San Giorgio (the site is referred to as the Cupa di Cremano and Pozzo di Cremano). It derives directly from the Latin word crematum which refers to the earth having been cremated by the lava flows of Vesuvius. Others believe though, that the name actually refers to Cambrano, a shortening of Cambarus who was a Roman landowner of the area in ancient times.

It’s commonly believed that San Giorgio- Saint George, stopped the flowing lava at the entrance of the town during the last recorded eruption in 1944.

Reality or myth, I don’t know, but for sure I know that today if you visit the town you can see the “wall” of amassed lava that block what used to be the main road of the town.    But, also at the foothill  of this volcano, as I mentioned in my last blog, an artistic movement was born ” The School of Resina” to which my artistic roots are attached. Resina, is the name that in the 19th century people used to call the city of Herculaneum.