Fratelli Alinari is one of the oldest still operating photo studios, founded in the mid-19th century in Florence by the brothers Leopoldo, Romualdo and Giuseppe Alinari. The small company specialized in photographing architectural monuments, paintings and sculptures, and later began to provide services in the field of portrait photography. The brothers became world famous in 1855, when they took part in the World Exhibition in Paris. Here, the Alinari brothers presented their first catalog with panoramas and monuments of Tuscany. In the following years, Fratelli Alinari photographs appeared at exhibitions in Vienna, Paris, Milan, Brussels.
Each of the brothers did his own thing: Romualdo did an excellent job as an administrator, Leopoldo was responsible for the cultural strategy of the studio, and Giuseppe, the youngest, was a technical specialist. In the early years, the studio used the collodion process in making photographs. After Leopoldo's death in 1865, Giuseppe began to experiment more, turning to technological innovations. Fratelli Alinari expanded its field of activity - the brothers began to receive requests to photograph the frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel, the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella, the interior of the Sistine Chapel, etc.
170 years later, Fratelli Alinari continues its work. One of the main areas of the company is the digitization of photographs taken over the past decades. Fratelli Alinari stores over 5.5 million photographs, and specialists add several dozen images to the digital archive every day. A large collection of photographs by the Alinari brothers is located in the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston (USA). The works of Giuseppe Alinari from the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo (Norway) are also presented here.
Source: nasjonalmuseet.no
