{"id":83,"date":"2017-03-18T21:17:02","date_gmt":"2017-03-18T21:17:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.mtholyoke.edu\/arth310brown\/?page_id=83"},"modified":"2017-05-04T18:08:04","modified_gmt":"2017-05-04T18:08:04","slug":"1840-to-1900","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/commons.mtholyoke.edu\/arth310brown\/19th-century\/1840-to-1900\/","title":{"rendered":"1840 to 1900"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Antiquity\u00a0Uncovered<\/h2>\n

“Unparalleled in their accuracy and artistry, photographs were rapidly disseminated among audiences avid to see, rather than merely imagine, history at first hand.” 1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

\n

In the years after the inventions by Daguerre and Talbot, photographers began to use the new invention at historic sites. The first camera views of the buried city of Pompeii were daguerreotypes taken by Alexander John Ellis in 1841. At this point, Pompeii was starting to become a tourist attraction as a designated spot on the Grand Tour – the traditional trip taken by young upper-class\u00a0men through Europe as part of their education.<\/p>\n

\"ALEXANDER<\/a>
Alexander John Ellis, Pompeii (English), the West Side of the Street of the Tombs with the remains of the Ancient Inn and (so called) Herculanean Gate. From the room built for the Custodi in the house called the Villa of Diomed, April 22, 1841. Daguerreotype<\/figcaption><\/figure>For Ellis, he favored the tourists and actually followed the popular guidebooks’ stops at scenic views on the\u00a0tourist route, beginning at the entrance from Naples through the Street of the Tombs, Forum, and Basilica.\u00a02<\/a><\/sup> He wanted to produce accurate representations of familiar Italian views that would rival the artistic approximations of engravers and painters. He wanted to faithfully detail locations so that future visitors would not have their expectations dashed by the reality, after seeing prints or lithographs. Proceeding by trial and error, Ellis took 137 daguerrotypes throughout Italy. 3<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

At the same time, William Henry Fox Talbot’s Calotype was being used to facilitated the multiplication of photographic images. Although the potential of photography for archaeological investigation was great, recognition was slow to take hold. It was not until accomplished amateur photographers like Calvert Richards Jones, Rev. George Wilson Bridges, and Stefano Lecchi was able to\u00a0pioneer the documentation of Pompeii, that the medium was finally recognized by the monarchy in Naples. As Bridges reported in a letter to Talbot in May 1847, King Ferdinand II of Naples was impressed with the photographs \u201cespecially those of the frescoes”\u00a0and thus granted permission for photographers to photograph throughout the Kingdom.4<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0The King\u2019s positive reaction suggests that there was official interest in the application of photography to reproduce wall paintings that faded quickly from exposed, which continues to be a problem today.<\/p>\n

\"Rev.<\/a>
Rev. George Wilson Bridges (English), Pompeii, Amphitheater, 1860s?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

During his time in Naples, Rev. George Wilson Bridges encountered an Italian calotypist and entrepreneur, Stefano Lecchi. Lecchi had perfected an improved calotype process and was on site with a royal commission as early as 1846 to document excavations. Bridges said of him that “… he makes use of very inferior paper and is more certain of good production…I saw him take 14 one morning at Pompeii without one failure.” 5<\/a><\/sup> Lecchi’s experiments produced several images of Pompeii during a time of experimentation of the medium.<\/p>\n

\"Stefano<\/a>
Stefano Lecchi (Italia), Casa del Fornaio, 1846<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At the same time, Fratelli Alinari (the brothers Alinari), were photographing for the tourism trade in Pompeii.\u00a0Fratelli Alinari\u00a0was an Italian firm founded in Florence in 1852 by the three Alinari brothers, Romualdo, Leopoldo, and Giuseppe. Fratelli Alinari became one of the largest and most prolific European photography firms of the 19th and 20th centuries. By 1880, the firm employed over 100 people. Alinari specialized in views of Italy and the reproduction of works of art. Below is an example of one of their photographs. At the time, these images were sold to tourists in Naples and customers abroad to advertise the site. Today, the firm is still well known for its archive of\u00a0photographs of Pompeii. Although the images are\u00a0in black and white, it has allowed archaeologists valuable information about the condition of frescoes and parts of Pompeii between the 1860s and 1900.<\/p>\n

\"Fratelli<\/a>
Fratelli Alinari (Italian), House of the Vettii, 1900, Glass Plate, Silver salt gelatin. Courtesy of Fine Art Images\/Alinari Archives, Firenze<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As photography evolved, so did its uses. Initially a tourist tool, it shifted to be\u00a0a form of documentation. Giuseppe Fiorelli, an Italian archaeologist and Director of Excavations at Pompeii from 1860 to 1875,\u00a0pioneered a method of archeology that\u00a0insisted\u00a0on documentation for recording and preserving Pompeii. He was instrumental in allowing photography to be used during excavations, most notably in his discovery of plaster cast. The injecting of plaster into the cavities left by the imprints of human bodies encased in the volcanic mud of Vesuvius created a cast of the figure. This discovery showing residents of Pompeii preserved in their final\u00a0moments gave the disaster an all too real face. Fiorelli took advantage of the tourist aspect of this discovery, as well as its\u00a0scientific advantage. In 1863, he collaborated with a German-born Italian, Giorgio Sommer. 6<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

\"Little<\/a>
Giorgio Sommer (German), Cast of Little Boy, 1882.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Giorgio Sommer was an established photographer in Naples who catered to the tourism industry\u00a0in Italy. Starting in 1860, he began to survey Pompeii, and by 1863 collaborated with Fiorelli, who helped\u00a0established him\u00a0as a premier architectural photographer.\u00a0Fiorelli turned to Sommer for photographs of his scientific discoveries, such as the\u00a0plaster casts, and then sent Sommer’s\u00a0photographs to senior cultural administrators in Florence.\u00a0Their collaboration resulted in a comprehensive collection of photographs\u00a0of the major areas excavated, as well as the growing museum collections at Pompeii.\u00a0Sommer’s photographs are scientific in their approach with an\u00a0accuracy and archaeological attention to detail that allows his photographs to\u00a0function as a bridge between archaeological practice, art, and tourism.7<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

\"Giorgio<\/a>
Giorgio Sommer (Germany), The Temple of Fortuna Augusta (The Temple of Fortuna Augusta, Pompeii), 1870, \u00a0Hand-colored albumen silver print<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u2190 Previous\u00a0<\/a><\/h2>\n

Next \u2192<\/a><\/h2>\n
\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n
    \n
  1. Szegedy-Maszak, Andrew.\u00a0Antiquity and photography: early views of ancient Mediterranean sites<\/em>. London: Thames & Hudson, 2005. ix. ↵<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  2. Coates, Victoria C. Gardner, & \u00a0Seydl, Jon L.,\u00a0Antiquity Recovered: The Legacy of Pompeii and Herculaneum<\/em>. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2007.\u00a070. ↵<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  3. Hannavy, John,\u00a0Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography<\/em>. New York: Taylor and Francis Group, 2008. 480-81. ↵<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  4. Coates, Victoria C. Gardner, & \u00a0Seydl, Jon L.,\u00a0Antiquity Recovered: The Legacy of Pompeii and Herculaneum<\/em>. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2007. 150. ↵<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  5. Ibid. 151. ↵<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  6. Szegedy-Maszak, Andrew.\u00a0Antiquity and photography: early views of ancient Mediterranean sites<\/em>. London: Thames & Hudson, 2005. 71. ↵<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  7. Coates, Victoria C. Gardner, & \u00a0Seydl, Jon L.,\u00a0Antiquity Recovered: The Legacy of Pompeii and Herculaneum<\/em>. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2007. 76. ↵<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Antiquity\u00a0Uncovered “Unparalleled in their accuracy and artistry, photographs were rapidly disseminated among audiences avid to see, rather than merely imagine, history at first hand.” 1…<\/p>\n

    Continue Reading1840 to 1900<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":672,"featured_media":0,"parent":7,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-83","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.mtholyoke.edu\/arth310brown\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/83","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.mtholyoke.edu\/arth310brown\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.mtholyoke.edu\/arth310brown\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.mtholyoke.edu\/arth310brown\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/672"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.mtholyoke.edu\/arth310brown\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/commons.mtholyoke.edu\/arth310brown\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/83\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":379,"href":"https:\/\/commons.mtholyoke.edu\/arth310brown\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/83\/revisions\/379"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.mtholyoke.edu\/arth310brown\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.mtholyoke.edu\/arth310brown\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}