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of the natural and artistic beauties of Naples and its bay,
of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and of the Amalfi coast,
and taking photographs of Neapolitan costumes. For
a short time he did portraits, but stopped in 1862. In
1861 at Naples he married Antonia Schmid, the daugh-
ter of a piano maker; they had two children, Edmund
and Carolina. Edmund worked in his father’s fi rm and
on the 21 of January 1889 became a partner. The fi rm
won prizes at international exhibitions: London (1862),
Paris (1867), Vienna (1873), and Nuremberg (1885). In
1865 Sommer was honoured by Vittorio Emanuele II
as Photographer Royal. He died on the 7th of August
1914 after having achieved great affl uence and European
fame. Nothing remains of his archive of plates. Today
there are only some of his photographs in public and
private collections.
See also: Behles, Edmondo.
Further Reading
Afeltra G., Di Pace U., Portoghesi P. et al., Giorgio Sommer
viaggio nel ricordo, Ercolano, Produzione Segno Associati,
1986.
Baum P., Giorgio Sommer (1834–1914). Photographien aus
Italien, Linz, Neue Galerie der Stadt Linz, 1985.
Becchetti, Piero, Fotografi e fotografi a in Italia 1839–1880,
Rome, Quasar, 1978, 86–87.
Cova, Massimo, Due professionisti dell’epoca del collodio: Pietro
Poppi e Giorgio Sommer, in Alle origini della fotografi a: un
itinerario toscano 1839–1880, edited by Falzone del Barbarò,
Michele, Maffi oli, Monica and Emanuela Sesti, 145–147, ,
Florence, Alinari, 1989,.(exhibition catalogue).
Hillebrand R., Giorgio Sommer. Romantische Nostalgie, in Pro-
fessional Camera, 2, maggio, 1979, 50–55, 96.
Miraglia, Marina, L’immagine tradotta dall’incisione alla foto-
grafi a, Naples, Studio Trisorio, 1977, 28–29.
Miraglia, Marina, Giorgio Sommer. In Miraglia, Marina et al.,
Fotografi a italiana dell’Ottocento, edited by Marina Miraglia
et al., 178, Milan and Florence, Electa/Alinari, 1979.
Miraglia, Marina, Giorgio Sommer. In Cultura fi gurativa ed
architettonica negli Stati del Re di Sardegna 1773–1861,
edited by Castelnuovo, Enrico and Marco Rosci, 1487–1488,
Torino, 1980.
Miraglia, Marina, Note per una storia della fotografi a italiana
(1839–1911), in Storia dell’arte italiana, 9, , 483–484, Turin,
Einaudi, 1981.
Miraglia, Marina, Giorgio Sommer’s Italian Journey. Between
Tradition and the Popular Image. History of Photography
vol. 20, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 41–48.
Miraglia, Marina, and Ulrich Pohlmann (eds.), Un viaggio fra
mito e realtà. Giorgio Sommer fotografo in Italia. 1857–1891,
Neaples, Carte Segrete, 1992 (exhibition catalogue).
Palazzoli, Daniela, Giorgio Sommer fotografo a Napoli, Milan,
Electa, 1981
Paoli, Silvia, Giorgio Sommer, in Miraglia, Marina and Matteo
Ceriana (editors), 1899, un progetto di fototeca pubblica per
Milano. Il ricetto fotografi co di Brera, Milan, Electa, 2000,
170–171(exhibition catalogue).
Petagna, G., Napoli e dintorni: Album di Giorgio Sommer foto-
grafo del Re, Neaples, Raffaele Irace Editore, 1980.
Van Deren Coke, “Giorgio Sommer.” in Bulletin of the University
of New Mexico 9 (1975–1976): 23–24.
von Dewitz, Bodo, Siegert, Dietmar and Karin Schuller-Procopo-
vici (eds.), Italien sehen und sterben. Photographien der zeit
des Risorgimento (1845–1870), Heidelberg, Braus, 1994, 283
(exhibition catalogue).
Weinberg, A.D., The photographs of Giorgio Sommer, Rochester,
New York, Visual Studies Workshop, 1981.SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM
The museum was actually located in the London district
of Brompton, where it opened its doors in 1857. How-
ever, its founding director, Henry Cole, thought that the
made-up name of ‘South Kensington’ possessed more
social tone. The museum was based on an earlier one
which was originally part of the Government School of
Design and went by various names in the early 1850s,
such as the Museum of Ornamental Art. These earlier
manifestations were much enlarged in physical plant
and intellectual ambition in the form of the South Kens-
ington Museum. This was created out of the cultural
impetus provided by the Great Exhibition of Works of
Industry of All Nations, held in London’s Hyde Park
in 1851. The Commissioners of the Great Exhibition
spent some of its enormous profi ts buying 86 acres of
land south of Hyde Park. Prince Albert saw this as the
site of a new cultural quarter. Henry Cole (1808–82), a
prime mover in organizing the Great Exhibition, took
control of the Schools of Design and the newly formed
Department of Practical Art at the Board of Trade in- The South Kensington Museum became a model
for many other museums around the world. The new
institution embraced the arts of everyday life and devel-
oped vigorous teaching programmes to improve design,
craftsmanship and taste. Cole did several important
things for photography. In 1852 he began a collection
of documentary photographs representing works of
art and architecture. Among the earliest acquisitions
was Maxime Du Camp’s Egypte, Nubie, Palestine et
Syrie, bought by instalments from 1853 onwards. Sec-
ondly, from 1853, Cole commissioned photographs of
the museum’s temporary exhibitions, so that a record
would be available for study when objects had been
returned to their owners. Francis Bedford (1816–94)
and Charles Thurston Thompson (1816–68) photo-
graphed An Exhibition of Decorative Furniture in 1853.
In 1856 Thompson was appointed Superintendant of
Photography and, assisted by soldiers seconded from the
Royal Engineers, established the world’s fi rst museum
photographic service. The purpose of the service was to
record works of art with the new authenticity provided
by photography and to make these photographs avail-
able at modest prices to the designers and others who
needed them. Photographs were often used to illustrate
the Museum’s catalogues in the era before accurate
photo-mechanical printing. Cole’s third innovation was
to begin a collection of the art of photography. He saw