"A KIND OF GHOSTLY WHITE FIGURE 'SLEEPING'": RARE 19TH-CENTURY PHOTOGRAPH ALBUM WITH 79 MOUNTED VINTAGE ALBUMEN PRINTS OF POMPEII BY PHOTOGRAPHER ROBERTO RIVE, INCLUDING IMAGES OF PEOPLE PRESERVED LIKE STATUES IN THE ERUPTION OF MOUNT VESUVIUS

(POMPEII) RIVE, Roberto. Photograph album. "Pompei" [cover and title page]. Naples, Italy: No publisher, circa 1875. Oblong quarto, contemporary gilt-stamped pebbled red cloth early rebacked in red morocco. Housed in a custom clamshell box.

Rare photograph album, circa 1875, an exceptional collection of 79 mounted vintage albumen prints of Pompeii from photographs by renowned Italian photographer Roberto Rive, including his haunting images of people caught in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, inspiring Marcel Proust to observe: "Nature, like the destruction of Pompeii… has arrested us in an unaccustomed movement."

This rare album contains 79 vintage albumen prints of Pompeii by British-born Italian photographer Roberto Rive, who had a studio in Naples from the early 1860s to 1889. One of Italy's "most important professional photographers… he took photographs of all the famous monuments in… Naples, Pompeii" and throughout Italy (Hannavy, Encyclopedia of 19th-Century Photography, 755, 1197). Rive photographed the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum in 1868, and his are among the first to show the stunning frescoes, sculpture and architectural remains of the cities buried and preserved by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The excavation of Pompeii was led by Giuseppe Fiorelli from 1863-75, and Rive's images capture many of Fiorelli's vivid castings. At the time "Pompeii was a prominent theme in the news and in European literature," and Marcel Proust was especially drawn to Rive's images—in particular that of "the beautiful woman facing down… a kind of ghostly white figure 'sleeping' and floating in dark space [herein "No. 168]… the shocking impact of these involuntarily cast bodies touched and fascinated Proust" (Hannavy, 96). His narrator, in Within a Budding Grove, observes: ""Nature, like the destruction of Pompeii… has arrested us in an unaccustomed movement." This photograph album is one of the largest collections of Rive's photographs of Pompeii that we can trace (others of 40 and 48 views are known). Containing 80 vintage albumen prints, including albumen print of the photographed title page, with its spelling of "Pompei," along with "Robert Rive Naples" in the negative and visible in the ornate flourish of the title "P." The 79 vintage albumen prints include haunting images of Fiorelli's casts of humans buried by the eruptions, along with views of temple ruins, murals, frescoes, mosaics, sculptures and much more. Each print measures 4-1/4 by 5-1/2 inches: each individually mounted within gilt-stamped borders on heavy card-stock. Many prints with faint "Roberto Rive" signed in the negative; with printed captions (in Italian) and numbered in the negative.

Prints fine and unfaded throughout, two leaves with expert reinforcement at hinges; light edge-wear, faint soiling to gilt-stamped binding. A splendid near-fine album.