895 - FRATELLI ALINARI (19th) Circle, Campo Santo in Naples, around 1880, albumen paper print

FRATELLI ALINARI (19th) Circle, Campo Santo in Naples, around 1880, albumen paper print Fratelli Alinari (19th century) Circle: The Campo Santo in Naples, Cemetery, Italy, c. 1880, albumen paper print Technique: albumen paper print, mounted on cardboard Date: c. 1880 Description: Shows a monk in a dark cloak standing in front of the walls of the tombs. Inscribed in the center at the bottom of the frame. Original photograph with high sharpness of detail. An early example of travel photography. Around the middle of the 19th century, more and more tourists from bourgeois circles traveled to Italy. At that time, taking photographs required a great deal of time and expensive, cumbersome equipment. This made many tourists all the more grateful for the work of professional photography studios on site, which allowed them to bring back a memento from afar for those who stayed at home or to collect as souvenirs. Famous photographers such as Carlo Naya, Giorgio Sommer, and the Alinari brothers photographed the most famous sights of their hometowns and traveled themselves to photograph their clients’ most popular destinations, offering these images as albumen prints. Ancient art treasures were also photographed and made available to travelers. The high-quality photographs of sculptures and frescoes continued to make an important contribution to documenting art treasures and making them accessible to scholars from all over Europe, who previously had to rely on tracings or engravings if they could not view the original for themselves. “Fratelli Alinari” in Florence is the oldest photographic company still in existence in the world: founded in 1852, a good two decades after the French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce succeeded in capturing an image on a tin plate. The Alinari brothers were Romualdo (1830–1891), Leopoldo (1832–1865), and Guiseppe (1836–1892). Leopoldo began taking photographs during the daguerreotype era and worked for the lithographer Guiseppe Bardi, with whom he established a joint photography studio in 1850. In 1854, Leopoldo bought Bardi’s shares and, together with his brothers, founded the Fratelli Alinari studio. It became one of the most important Italian studios of the 19th century and later one of the largest photo archives in the world, which still exists today. Keywords: 19th century, Historicism, Architecture, Italy, Size: Cardboard: 31.0 cm x 36.5 cm (12.2 x 14.4 in), Image: 19.7 cm x 25.0 cm (7.8 x 9.8 in) Condition: Good condition. In places, there are small pale spots and minimal signs of rubbing. The photograph is of excellent quality and appears sharp. The cardboard has discolored slightly due to age and is stained at the edges.