Visions of doom
In the fall of 1833, an English nobleman and novelist by the name of Edward Bulwer-Lytton passed through Milan — part of a journey to both regain his health and escape a hectoring wife. (Yes, that Bulwer-Lytton, who wrote the most famous opening line in literature: “It was a dark and stormy night. …”) He visited the Brera Gallery, and was unimpressed by the paintings — except one: a depiction of crowds fleeing Pompeii, the doomed city that in A.D. 79 was buried in ash from an erupting Mount Vesuvius. “The picture is full of genius, imagination, and nature,” Bulwer-Lytton wrote later. “The faces are fine, the conception grand.” That winter, he was inspired again by studying the city itself, unearthed nearly 100 years before but just being fully excavated. The result was “The Last Days of Pompeii” (1834), which became the most popular historical novel of the 19th century. Its opening...