Over the last year, the MANN undertook a campaign to restore many of the sheets held in the Drawing Archive: prints, watercolours, gouaches and plants of the findings at Herculaneum and Pompeii, collected throughout two centuries of documentation of the Vesuvian excavations.
The focus here is the Pompeian house. As such, the exhibition not only celebrates the recent restorations, showing to the public artworks that are rarely exhibited, but, together with the exhibition 1859 – A Russian photographer in Pompeii. Gabriel Ivanovič de Rumine, it also dialogues with the new permanent display dedicated to the house and the domestic objects in rooms XCI–XCIV.
The Archaeological Museum of Naples owns 74 Pompeian watercolours by Luigi Bazzani (1836–1927): together with those of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome, it is one of the largest collection of the artist’s works . A successful set designer, Bazzani first arrived in Pompeii in the 1880s and, for many years ahead, he focused on the production of watercolours depicting monuments of the city. His sheets stand out for a surprising attention to reality, so much so that in 1922 the Museum of Naples acquired a group of them in order to support the documentation of the excavations, and initially exhibited them in the hall of the scale model of Pompeii. The sheets on display mainly represent house interiors, furniture still in situ and gardens.
The exhibition presents an in-depth focus on one Pompeian house in particular: the House of the Faun. The starting point is a large watercolour representing the house’s tile roofs. Discovered in the early 1830s, the building is a unique example for the wealth and refinement of its decorative apparatus. The gouaches, drawings and photographs on display, dating to shortly after the discovery, illustrate both the complex as a whole and the sophisticated details.
The exhibition has been curated by Andrea Milanese, Ruggiero Ferrajoli and Domenico Pino, and is open until the 28th of February 2026 in Room XCV at the second floor of the Museum.
