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professional partner Mattia Montecchi, a compatriot
who travelled to England with him, were summoned to
Osborne on the Isle of Wight to take a series of photo-
graphs of the Royal children. His growing reputation
was suffi cient for him to be established in April on the
premises of P&D Colnaghi by John Scott, one of the
fi rms’ partners, and by June 1857 this establishment was
noted in the columns of the Art-Journal. Colnaghi was
to remain the primary publisher of Caldesi’s reproduc-
tions of works of art.
Although Caldesi specialised in the photographic re-
production of works of art, his core business was centred
on society portraiture and he exhibited several of these at
that year’s Art Treasures exhibition in Manchester. Caldesi
and Montecchi also were engaged to photograph many of
the paintings exhibited at this seminal exhibition. Along-
side Robert Howlett [qv], they produced the majority of
the 200 photographs for the two-volume ‘Ancient’ and
‘Modern’ series of Photographs of the Gems of the Art
Treasures Exhibition, Manchester. Caldesi found diffi culty
in photographing some of the paintings in Manchester
and successfully negotiated with the Royal Collection for
some of its works to be subsequently moved outdoors to
be photographed.
In the summer of 1857 Caldesi and Montecchi photo-
graphed a smaller exhibition of portraits of Mary, Queen
of Scots held at the Archaeological Institute, London.
Theseat were published in 1858.
In 1859 The Gallery of the Most Noble The Marquess
of Hertford, K.G., a selection of Caldesi’s photographs
from the Manchester exhibition, was published. At that
year’s exhibition of the Société française de Photogra-
phie Caldesi and Montecchi exhibited twenty-one pho-
tographs of paintings displayed at the 1857 Manchester
Art Treasures.
Caldesi advertised a studio at Porchester Terrace in
London’s Bayswater and he began carrying out photo-
graphic work for Prince Albert’s Raphael Collection
project. Perhaps as a result of this commission, Caldesi
recorded the paintings in Buckingham Palace and was
given permission to remove them to his studio. These
photographs were published by P&D Colnaghi as the
Royal Collection of Pictures at Buckingham Palace,
and comprised forty small Albumen prints mounted on
cards with printed captions that credit Caldesi, Bland-
ford & Co. as the photographers, Montecchi having
disappeared from the scene. This publication may bear
the hand of the Prince Consort. Caldesi received further
royal patronage that year when he was commissioned by
Grand Duchess Marie of Russia to photograph the Elgin
Marbles in the British Museum and he exhibited some
of these views the following year at the Photographic
Society’s exhibition in London.
Caldesi advertised in the infl uential Athenæum in the
early 1860s stating that he personally took carte de visite
portraits at 13 Pall Mall East, the Colnaghi premises,
while ‘portraits, Carriages, Horses, &c.’ were taken at
the branch studio at 6 Victoria Grove, Kensington. He
photographed a number of prominent people including
Sir Charles Eastlake, director of the National Gallery. In
1864 Caldesi published carte de viste portraits Giuseppe
Garibaldi and his fellow patriot Giuseppe Mazzini
(1805–1872) during their visits to London.
During the 1860s Caldesi also produced cartes de
visites of paintings though it appears that he did not use
the stereoscopic or Cabinet formats to any signifi cant
degree.
In 1860 Caldesi carried out a photographic campaign
in the National Gallery in London, exhibiting some these
photographs of paintings at the 1861 exhibition of the
Société française de Photographie. Between 1868 and
1873 The Pictures by the Old Masters in The National
Gallery, a series of photographs of 360 paintings, was
published by Virtue & Company. At this time Caldesi
photographed a number of paintings in the Gallery on
behalf of the director Sir William Boxall (1800–1879).
During the 1860s Caldesi was to carry out photo-
graphic campaigns to record important private art col-
lections such as the Farnley Hall collection of drawings
by J.M.W. Turner These photographs, published by
Colnaghi in 1864, seem to have had little impact and
were not reviewed by the contemporary press. Another
Colnaghi publication of 1864 was the Photographic
Historical Portrait Gallery, which required Caldesi to
photograph just under 200 Albumen prints of Tudor
portrait miniatures.
An account of the latter years of Caldesi’s life has
yet to be assembled. Photographs by Cave. Leonida
Caldesi, of Ancient Marbles, Bronzes, Terracottas, & C,
& C. in the British Museum was jointly published with
Colnaghi’s between 1873–1874 but the photographs
may have been taken some years before. Caldesi ap-
pears to have returned to Bologna in around 1870 and
died there in 1891.
Anthony HamberSee Also: Colnaghi, Paul and Dominic; Société
française de Photographie; and Cartes-de-Visite.Further Reading
Hamber, Anthony, ‘A Higher Branch of the Art.’ Photographing
the Fine Arts in England 1839–1880, Gordon and Breach,
Amsterdam, 1996.
Dimond, Frances and Taylor, Roger, Crown & Camera, the
Royal Family and Photography 1842–1910, Penguin Books,
Harmonsworth, 1987.
Piero Zama, ‘Mazzini e I Suoi Ritratii. I Fratelli Caldesi e Do-
menico Lama Fotografi ,’ Studi Romagnoli, XVIII, Faenza,
1967, 417–459.
Piero Zama, I Faentini nell’Ideologia e nell’AzioneMazziniana
(1840–1870), Stab. Grafi co F.LLI Lega, Faenza, 1973.