Giuseppe Alinari

Alinari, Giuseppe (1836-92), Leopoldo (1832-65), and Romualdo (1830-91), Florentine photographers and publishers. Leopoldo learned lithography and daguerreotypy from Giuseppe Bardi in the late 1840s, and he and Bardi opened a studio in 1852. By 1854 Leopoldo had bought out Bardi and his brothers had joined the enterprise, renamed Fratelli Alinari. In 1863 it moved from the Oltrarno district to imposing premises at Via nazionale 8. In addition to portraits (including Garibaldi and Victor Emanuel II) it produced celebrated views of Florence and Tuscany; genre and street scenes; and an expanding series of Italian landscapes, presented by the fervently patriotic brothers as a tribute to the new nation. Alinari's archive eventually comprised c. 70, 000 images. Another speciality was the reproduction of works of art in Italian, German, French, and Greek galleries.

Leopoldo's son Vittorio (1856/9?-1932) took over in the early 1890s, eventually opening branches in Rome and Naples. Vittorio had wide cultural interests, running a literary salon at his villa in Fiesole and patronizing the Macchiaioli painters. His photographic magnum opus, Il paesaggio italico nella Divina Comedia, comprising all the landscapes mentioned by Dante, finally appeared in 1921. The previous year, however, he had sold out to the Istituto di Edizioni Artistiche (IDEA). The firm continues today as a publishing house and picture archive.

— Kelley E. Wilder

Bibliography

• Quintavalle, A. C., Gli Alinari (2003)