754
and opacity of the paper used for the negatives. With
the improvements introduced by L. D. Blanquart-Evrard
(1802–1872) and Gustave Le Gray (1820–1882), it was
possible to produce paper negatives with more precise
details while maintaining the half tones, which painter-
photographers liked so much. This technique was widely
used for views, in particular, monuments, archaeological
sites and landscapes. Above all, travellers appreciated
the technique because the materials it required was
light and easy to carry; they could also be prepared
many months beforehand. Among non-Italians worth
mentioning are Calvert Richard Jones (1804–1877),
George Wilson Bridges (1788–1863), William Robert
Baker (1810–1896) and Edouard Delessert (active
in Sardinia in 1854). The photographers of the “Ro-
man School of Photography,” in particular Giacomo
Caneva (1813–1865, from Padua), Frederic Flachéron
(1813–1883 ca.) and Eugéne Costant excelled in the
calotype process. Together with Giron des Anglonnes
and Alfred—Nicolas Normand (1822–1902), they were
among the fi rst Roman calotypists who, integrated into
the cultural milieu of the 1850s, made Rome an interna-
tional capital. The Caffè Greco or the French Academy
in the Villa Medici were among the places where photog-
raphers, artists and intellectuals most frequently met to
exchange opinions, news and experiences. This special
climate encouraged the development of photography; in
fact, there was an extraordinary production of views and
monuments of the papal capital and the vicinity. The fi rst
systematic campaigns to photograph works of art were
undertaken: it is enough to cite Giacomo Caneva’s shots
of the statues in the Capitoline and Vatican Museums,
among which are the famous images of the Laocoonte
and the Torso del Belvedere. In Rome, we should also
mention the work of Stefano Lecchi (1805–1860 ca.),
author of numerous views of monuments and the fi rst
reportage of a war event, the clashes in Rome for the
defence of the Republic in 1849. Lecchi, from Lom-
bardy, took shots on site and then printed them as salted
papers. He went to all the scenes of confl ict, and often
had soldiers pose in them for greater effect. His views,
recently rediscovered and studied, constitute one of the
fi rst examples of a series of photographs dedicated to
current events, and came before the series Roger Fenton
did in 1855 on the Crimean war. However, the people
involved in the action could not yet be photographed as
it was happening, but only later, and so the images are
full of an expressive force, often retouched by hand in
the foreground with the insertion of fi gures to make up
for the lack of action.
In the Lombard–Veneto area, the work of Luigi
Sacchi (1805–1861), painter, engraver and then pho-
tographer, deserves special mention. After a period of
training in the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan
and experience as a lithographer and wood engraver(he got a prestigious commission as editor in chief of
the illustrated edition of Alessandro Manzoni’s The
Betrothed which came out between 1840 and 1842), he
chose the calotype process. He depicted the most famous
monuments which represented the many centuries of
Italy’s artistic tradition. His views, part of which were
collected in the Monumenti, vedute e costumi d’Italia
series published between 1852 and 1855, are the work
of a passionate photographer, driven by the intention to
do a true visual catalogue of Italy’s artistic and natural
beauty. His intellectual vitality also came out in the
journal L’Artista. Rivista enciclopedica di belle arti, di
scienze applicate all’industria, di fotografi a, di archeo-
logia e di viaggi scientifi ci, of which he was editor and
publisher in 1859.
In the fi fties, important technical texts on photog-
raphy were published in Italy. Apart from the treatise
Giacomo Caneva’s Della fotografia (1855), which
focused on the calotype process, Il Plico del fotografo
by the multifaceted, cosmopolitan Giuseppe Venanzio
Sella (1823–1876) from Biella came out the following
year. A chemist and wool manufacturer, Sella dedicated
himself to photography after a period in Paris, and
rapidly achieved remarkably high quality results. He
experimented with the new wet collodion technique,
and became one of the most distinguished fi gures in
the sector.
The daguerreotype and calotype processes co-existed
in the photographer’s daily routing until around 1860.
At the same time, together with the collodion process,
the albumen print became widespread in Italy, until
the fi rst years after the First World War. From about
1860 onwards, along with the economical, political
and social evolution of the bourgeois at the threshold
of the unifi cation of Italy, photography became more
and more widespread as mean of representation. This
success became even more pronounced once unifi cation
had come about, encouraged as it was by the cultural
context of the second half of the XIX century. The rise
of positivism had in fact had deposited fertile terrain for
scientifi c and technological development. All scientifi c
innovations, and hence, photography, were received
as signs of humanity’s unrestrainable progress. In this
period the fi rst Italian journal entirely dedicated to pho-
tography, La Camera Oscura was founded in 1863 in
Milan by Ottavio Baratti. After various ups and downs,
publication was stopped after 1894.
The great photography ateliers were born, either from
previous fi rms founded by the pioneers of photography
at its origins, or on the initiative of new profession-
als—photographers who had acquired the technical,
expressive, cultural and managerial know-how thanks to
their travels abroad. The training of this new group was
no longer linked to particular, restricted fi elds like optics
or miniatures, but to vaster sectors, above all, engrav-ITALY
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