RKD STUDIES

By the time Laurens Lodewijk Kleyn arrived in Rome in 1851, photography already had a strong presence in the city. Within a few years of the invention of the daguerreotype in 1839, instructors offered lessons on the streets, while chemists, archaeologists and artists experimented with the new technique. In the 1840s Rome was full of daguerreotypists, each claiming to know a faster or more efficient method.¹ The daguerreotype, admired for its sharpness, nevertheless had important drawbacks: the heavy metal plates were unwieldy, and every picture was unique, with no possibility of producing a second print. This changed with the calotype, invented by the Englishman William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877).² Based on a paper negative from which multiple positives could be made, it was lighter, portable and better suited to outdoor use. Rome, with its ruins, lively streets and constant influx of artists and tourists, quickly became one of the first places where this new method was tried out on a larger scale.

One of the earliest calotypes made in Rome was Victor Prevost’s (1820-1881) view of the Colosseum in 1843. The Italian Giacomo Caneva (1813-1856) [11] soon followed, and was joined by others such as Calvert Richard Jones (1804-1877), Maxime Du Camp (1822-1894) and Frédéric Flachéron (1813-1883). Flachéron in particular became key figure in a group of photographers later described as the Roman School of Photography or the Circle of the Caffè Greco.³ Active between about 1847 and 1853, the group included Caneva, Flachéron, the British painter James Anderson (1813-1877) and the Scottish painter Robert Macpherson (1814-1872). They went on joint excursions into the countryside, photographed ruins and monuments, and met at the Caffè Greco [12] to share results. They never formed a formal association, but their activities gave rise to the first recognisable photographic community in Italy, where technical trial and artistic ambition went hand in hand.⁴ Contemporary witnesses quickly noticed the novelty of this scene. The chemist Richard W. Thomas, writing in The Art Journal after a four-month stay in Rome in 1852, described the Caffè Greco as a place where the latest photographic discoveries were debated, knowledge was freely exchanged, and where newcomers could learn about the art almost immediately.⁵ His account illustrates the openness in which artists from different backgrounds could take part, regardless of whether they aimed to become professional photographers.

Such openness found its counterpart in Rome’s long-standing role as a training ground for artists. For centuries the city had been a the place where artists refined their skills by drawing antiquities, studying archaeological remains, and copying Old Masters. Kleyn followed this tradition diligently, but he also broadened it through photography. A small note, in which an anonymous writer asked for the return of a camera confiscated at customs “on behalf of the artist,” suggests that Kleyn may even have brought photographic equipment with him to Rome.⁶ His surviving passports and notebooks record extensive travels across the peninsula, with repeated visits to Naples and Sicily. In one sketchbook he listed “places for photography,” among them Pompeii and Agrigento, classic destinations of the Grand Tour.⁷ Whether he photographed them all is uncertain, but the act of cataloguing them as such reveals a clear intention: to complement his sketching and painting with the camera.

It is against this background that Kleyn’s Roman years must be understood. There is no proof that he worked directly with the leading members of the Roman School, but his notes and correspondence make frequent mention of them. Caneva appears regularly, as does the bookseller Joseph Spithöver (1813-1892), one of the main dealers in photographs. Spithöver’s shop on the Piazza di Spagna sold views of ruins, monuments [13], and artworks [14], often in the form of cartes de visite.⁸ These photographs became popular souvenirs for the many tourists in Rome and gradually replaced the sixteenth-century prints that had long filled that role. Photography, in short, was everywhere in the city.

Kleyn’s awareness of these figures, together with the fact that he had letters delivered to the Caffè Greco, suggests that he was well aware of this photographic milieu, even if he did not stand at its centre. For him, the Roman School was less important for its technical innovations than for its atmosphere of openness. The free exchange of knowledge that Thomas described meant that even painters with no ambition to become photographers could learn and experiment. Kleyn, trained as a history painter, clearly absorbed this spirit. His later lists of “places for photography” and his surviving negatives of sitters in Roman gardens echo the ethos of the Roman School: a readiness to test the camera as an artistic tool alongside the traditional practice of sketching and painting.

11
Giacomo Caneva,
Circo Agonale ora Piazza Navona, 1850,
photograph, salted paper print, 213 × 270 mm,
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. RP-F-1996-261

12
Ludwig Passini,
Artists in the Caffè Greco in Rome, 1856,
watercolor on paper, 49 x 62,5 cm,
Hamburger Kunsthalle, inv. no. 2522

13
Anonymous, published by Libreria Spithöver,
Pantheon, Rome, ca. 1855-1885,
photograph, carte-de-visite, 63 x 106 mm,
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. RP-F-F24761

14
Anonymous, published by Libreria Spithöver,
Capitoline Venus, ca. 1855-1885,
photograph, carte-de-visite, 106 x 63 mm,
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. RP-F-F24738