1132
the fi rst (and probably unique) installment of L’Italie
monumentale. Emphasizing on the competition between
photography and printmaking, Francis Wey considered
that “thus begins the series of art travels books illustrated
by photography: Mr. Piot created a new commercial
fi eld” (La Lumière, August 17, 1851, p. 111). His other
publications—none of which he completed—include
L’Acropole d’Athènes (1852), Temples grecs (1854),
Rome et ses environs, and L’élite des monuments fran-
çais.
Piot exhibited at the Royal Society of Arts in London
(1852), at the 1855 Exposition universelle in Paris (First
Class Medal), and at the Société française de photogra-
phie (1857, 1859).
Pierre-Lin Renié
See also: Blanquart-Evrard, Louis-Désiré; Wey,
Francis; and Société française de photographie.
Further Reading
Courajod, L., “Eugène Piot et les objets d’art légués au Louvre,”
Gazette des Beaux-Arts, May 1890.
Dalarun-Mitrovitsa, Catherine, “Eugène Piot,” Éclats d’his-
toire. Les collections photographiques de l’Institut de France
1839–1918, 42–44. Arles: Actes Sud, Paris: Institut de France,
2004, Jammes, Isabelle, Blanquart-Évrard et les origines de
l’édition photographique française. Catalogue raisonné des
albums photographiques édités, 1851–1855. Genève, Paris:
Droz, 1981.
Piot, Charlotte, “Eugène Piot (1812–1890), publiciste et éditeur.”
Histoire de l’art, no. 47 (November 2000): 3–17.
Sainte-Marthe, Bertrand, Les publications photographiques
d’Eugène Piot. Master Thesis, University Paris 4, 1992.
PIZZIGHELLI, GIUSEPPE (1849–1912)
Giuseppe Pizzighelli (according to his friend and co-
researcher Josef Maria Eder) was the son of an Austrian
army surgeon of Italian origin, and was educated at the
military academy in Vienna.
He is fi rst recorded as a keen amateur photographer in
the late 1860s, while a serving lieutenant in the Austrian
army, working with his friend and fellow offi cer Victor
Tóth, and wet collodion plates and ‘Busch combination
lenses for portraits and landscapes’ (Eder 1945).
Despite training as a military engineer, in 1878
Pizzighelli was appointed as head of the photographic
department of the Austrian army’s Technical Military
Committee in Vienna, with the rank of captain, and his
important published contributions to the development of
photography all date from after this appointment.
It was during this posting that Pizzighelli joined
with Baron von Hübl in the preparation of platinum
prints—following William Willis’s instructions. Von
Hübl was a fellow captain—later to achieve the rank of
Field Marshall—and their work led to the introduction of
a signifi cant improvement to the process that Willis had
patented in 1873. It was Pizzighelli and von Hübl’s work
in the later 1870s and early 1880s which improved the
reliability and manufacturing consistency of the paper
itself, and led to much more widespread use of platinum
as the ideal ‘permanent’ printing medium.
He and von Hübl published their experimental results
in early 1882, and their work was awarded a medal by
the Vienna Photographic Society—an organization
with which he would have a continuing relationship.
An abridged version of their account was translated
into English and published in the Journal of the Photo-
graphic Society in the same year.
Their much more comprehensive book Die Platint-
ype was also published in 1882. It was also translated
into French and published by Gauthier-Villars of Paris
in 1883 and, translated into English by J. F. Iselin and
edited by William de Wivileslie Abney, it was published
in London by Harrison & Sounds in 1886.
The platinotype enjoyed considerable popularity
within the expanding community of art photographers
in the closing years of the ninettenth and early years
of the twentieth centuries—notable inclusions being
Frederick H Evans, Paul Martin, Alfred Steiglitz, Paul
Strand, and Clarence White.
While several published sources make much of the
claim that Pizzighelli and von Hübl gave their process
‘freely to the world,’ an 1887 patent exists in Pizzighel-
li’s name which suggests the contrary. By that time he
had been posted to Bosnia as an engineering offi cer, and
was working alone. That 1887 patent refers to a modifi ed
version of the platinotype—a printing-out paper using
sodium ferric oxalate and potassium chloroplatinate
which did not require further development. It was briefl y
marketed as the Pizzitype, but ironically—bearing in
mind that he and von Hübl had improved the consis-
tency of the developed platinum print—it was, allegedly,
inconsistency in manufacture which led to the material
being withdrawn from sale.
Pizzighelli and Eder are credited with the production
of the fi rst chemically developed gelatin silver chloride
emulsions in 1881—both prints and glass diaposi-
tives—twelve years before Leo Hendrik Baekeland’s
introduction of Velox ‘gaslight’ paper. They had started
their collaboration in 1880 and reported their work to
the Vienna Academy of Sciences in January 1881, pub-
lishing their results in a lengthy-titled pamphlet in the
same year—Die Photographie mit Chlorsilbergelatine
und chemischer Entwicklung nebst einer praktischen
Anleitung zur raschen Herstellung von Diapositiven,
Stereoskopbildern, Fensterbildern, Duplikat-Negativen,
Vergrösserungen; Kopien auf Papier ... Eder went on to
produce the fi rst gelatin silver chloro-bromide emulsions
himself. When later writers asserted that others had prior
claim for the production of the fi rst developed silver
chloride emulsions, the 75-year old Eder asserted his