The Pompeian style in Latin America

Abstract

The discovery of Pompeii in 1748 had a profound impact in various fields, but particularly
in art. The findings were officially published in the Antichità di Ercolano esposte, which was only
printed in a limited edition for Charles of Bourbon to give as a gift to prominent individuals and
institutions. Nevertheless, the illustrations contained in this work (and in its translations into
English, German and French) reached a wider audience that included scholars, artists and decorators,
and became a source of inspiration in the eighteenth century, forming an artistic style known as
‘Pompeian’. Numerous examples of decorations in this style have been studied in Sweden, Germany,
France, England, Italy and Spain, but although the Pompeian style also spread to the entire
American continent, as attested by architectural, photographic and journalistic evidence, until recently
attention has only been paid to examples in the United States. In the present article, we analyse
various examples of Pompeian design and decoration located in Latin America, and show how the
widespread popularity of classical antiquity was used as a stimulus for modernisation by elites who
sought new aesthetic references in a quest to break cultural ties with the mother country.