Antonio Piaggio

From September 1779 to August 1795, Piaggio kept a series of diaries for Sir William Hamilton, in which he recorded daily observations and sketches of Vesuvius, which he could see from his residence at Madonna Pugliano near Resina, on the western side of Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples. These diaries were presented by Hamilton to Sir Joseph Banks, and then presented by Lady Dorothea Banks to the Royal Society in 1805.^[6] The diaries remain in the Royal Society archives today.^[7]

One of Piaggio's sketches of the 1779 eruption of Vesuvius was used by Hamilton as the basis for an illustration in the lavish book 'Campi Phlegraei';^[8] and a number of Piaggio's engravings remain in circulation.^[9] Hamilton used another of Piaggio's illustrations in a paper describing the 1794 eruption of Vesuvius. The caption records that Piaggio drew the sketch from Resina during the force of the eruption, but that the proximity to the activity meant that it was incomplete since Piaggio's friends had had to rescue him in the midst of a shower of cinders and sulphureous ashes.^[10]

The British Museum holds a drawing by Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione that was once from Piaggio's collections.^[11]