Santa Lucia, Naples
1845–46
Medium
Salted paper prints from paper negatives
Dimensions
22.4 x 36.2 cm (8 13/16 x 14 1/4 in.) overall Image: 22.2 x 17 cm (8 3/4 x 6 11/16 in.) each
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gilman Collection, Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2005
Accession Number
2005.100.947a, b
Tags
Art Historical Context
Calvert Richard Jones’s “Santa Lucia, Naples” offers a rare glimpse of the Italian city through one of photography’s earliest processes. Created between 1845 and 1846, the work consists of two salted paper prints made paper negatives, a technique that allowed artists to produce multiple copies of an image while capturing delicate architectural details. Jones, a Welsh clergyman and amateur photographer, was among the first to explore the medium’s potential for travel views, traveling extensively in the Mediterranean during the 1840s. The paired images present a sweeping view of Naples’s Santa ...