Vatican Museums

Thursdays in the Museums on 14 April will be dedicated to the book “Domenico Anderson (1854-1938) Fotografo in Vaticano” [Domenico Anderson (1854-1938) Photographer in the Vatican], published by Edizioni Musei Vaticani. The book retraces the history and work of the Anderson Company, founded by the father Giacomo and handed down to the son Domenico, who led it to become one of Italy’s most important photographic firms. For three generations, from 1845, the Anderson firm carried out its work in Rome, working assiduously both within and for the Vatican Museums.

The first section of the book, edited by Paola di Giammaria (Director of the Photo Library) with the collaboration of Alessia Lobosco, reconstructs the biography of the Englishman James Anderson – later Italianised to Giacomo – one of the pioneers of historical photography in late nineteenth-century Rome, and of his son Domenico. The second section of the book examines Domenico’s work within the Vatican Museums, where, between 1933 and 1934, he produced the renowned photographic series on the Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel and the Pauline Chapel. The third section is dedicated to the photographic techniques chosen by the photographer for his most important works in the Sistine and Pauline Chapels, works commissioned by the then Director of the Vatican Museums, Bartolomeo Nogara.

The Vatican Museums Photo Library comprises some 400,000 positives and 350,000 negatives, including 50,000 glass plates, with subjects ranging from the works and interiors of the Museums to landscapes, architecture, monuments, palaces, churches, archaeological excavations in Rome and many other Italian locations, covering a period from the second half of the nineteenth century to the 1970s. The Photo Library houses – in addition to numerous prints, albumen prints and glass plates by Domenico Anderson – the Anderson Sistine Chapel and Pauline Chapel collections, comprising some 270 original negatives.

The conference will be introduced by the Director of the Vatican Museums, Barbara Jatta. The speakers – in the presence of the book’s editors, Paola di Giammaria and Alessia Lobosco –, will be: Andrea Bacchi, Director of the Zeri Foundation, Bologna; Rita Scartoni, Head of Licensing and Projects at the Alinari Foundation for Photography; and Ilaria Schiaffini, Associate Professor of History of Photography at Sapienza University of Rome.