Images of Italy (1480 to 1900)

When you take photos on holiday do you focus on the picturesque landmarks or are you trying to capture a sense of place?

This display explores how visual representations of Italy developed. These range from 15th-century woodcuts to 19th-century photography.

Books, travel guides and diaries from the Library's collections document the rise in visitors to Italy. You will see how book illustrators and photographers saw Italy, and how their work provided an impression of the country for British and European audiences.

Early book illustrators usually presented a highly idealised, almost mythical, view of the country. They focussed on magnificent Roman ruins, imposing Renaissance buildings, and beautiful rural scenes.

The invention of photography in the 19th century provided a new way to record Italy.

Early photographers continued the picturesque tradition of book illustrators. You can explore this in Robert Macpherson's photographs of Rome and examples from John Ruskin's collection of daguerreotypes (on loan from The Ruskin, Lancaster University).

See recently acquired 1840s calotype negatives, probably by James Calder MacPhail and James Dunlop. These are the earliest surviving photographs of Italy by Scots.

You can also enjoy James Craig Annan's 1890s photogravures of Venice and Lombardy. These showed how handheld cameras could record street scenes and everyday life in Italy.