904 - FRATELLI ALINARI (19th century), Baths of Caracalla, Rome, circa 1880, albumen print

FRATELLI ALINARI (19th century), Baths of Caracalla, Rome, circa 1880, albumen print Fratelli Alinari (19th century): Rome, Baths of Caracalla, Latin: Thermae Antoninianae, ancient bathing facility, c. 1880, albumen print Technique: albumen print, mounted on cardboard Stamp: Lower right: Blank stamp, Fratelli Alinari. Florence. 19th century Inscription: At the bottom, inscribed on the printing plate: "Roma Terme di Caracalla o. Antoniane". Date: c. 1880 Description: Foreground featuring numerous pack horses. Original photograph with high detail sharpness. An early example of travel photography. Around the middle of the 19th century, more and more tourists from middle-class 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: Italy view, travel photography, architectural photography, documentation, photo album, bath complex, Caracalla, thermal bath complex, 19th century, Historicism, Architecture, Italy, Rome (Lazio), Size: Cardboard: 22.0 cm x 27.6 cm (8.7 x 10.9 in), Image: 18.6 cm x 24.4 cm (7.3 x 9.6 in) Condition: Good condition. The image is very impressive. The photograph is discolored along the margins and has minimal foxing in the area of the sky. The lower left corner is slightly creased; the upper edge is irregularly trimmed. The cardboard is stained due to age and bent due to mounting.