Also the 2nd instalment of the exhibition "Pictorial series of the manifestations of the dynamics of the Earth", called "Historical images of world volcanoes" (Geophysical Institute, Prague, March Ist, 2000), resulted from the scientific interests of the Geophysical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in Prague (GI). Though the investigation of volcanoes and of volcanic and magmatic processes is not among the main activities of the GI, a close relation of earthquake generation with volcanic activity in many tectonic settings drew the interest of the geophysicists of the GI to volcanic processes. Similar to the historical images of the world earthquakes, discussed in the commentary to the 1st Regular Exhibition at the Geophysical Inst., Prague (Kozak and Spicak, 2001), also the historical pictorial materials on volcanoes and volcanic eruptions demonstrate the development of geo-sciences in the course of the 16th - 19 th centuries. Three types of historical images representing three periods of the evolution of the knowledge of volcanic processes arc presented. In the early woodcut depictions of the first half of the 16th century, the eruption of Etna in Sicily (Fig. 1) and the formation and eruption of a new volcano Monte Nuovo in 1538 (Fig. 2) in the Campi Flegrei volcanic field (Phlegreian Fields) near the town of Pozzuoli in Central Italy are portrayed. Figure 1 (rather a raw sketch, partly due to the woodcut technique) shows Etna as a small hill located just on the coast of the Messina Straits. The graphical presentation is fairly exaggerated and simplified; in reality the diameter of the volcano at its heel is over 40 km. The author shows only smoke, fire explosion and launched pumices, but no lava flows (for details see Munster, 1544). Also the six years older depiction presented in Fig. 2, showing the birth of a new mountain, Monte Nuovo in 1538, is fairly exaggerated, though the topography of the figure is more realistic. The image accompanies the contemporary printed news reporting that, (quote) "the Monte Nuovo grew some 150 m during the first week of its volcanic activity". The savants of the time considered the 'Monte Nuovo effect' as one of the miracles of the Earth's manifestations (da Toledo, 1539). Figures 1 and 2, illustrating the first period of volcanologica l research, indicate that in the early depictions of disastrous volcanic phenomena the attention of the painters was