Art Institute of Chicago

Palace of the Caesars on the Palatine

Robert MacPherson

Date

1860

Medium

Albumen print

Culture

Scotland

Department

Photography and Media

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

Robert MacPherson moved to Rome in 1840, working as a landscape painter and art dealer until he began practicing photography in 1851. A new class of tourists—beyond the coterie of aristocrats who had initially popularized the Grand Tour—had begun traveling to Italy, and MacPherson quickly opened a photography studio to sell his high-quality prints of famous sculptures and architectural sites. For this view, he aimed his camera toward the southeast from the ruins of the Palace of the Caesars on Palatine Hill in Rome. Visible to the right are the Circus Maximus and the crenellated tower of the Santa Balbina church and monastery. In 1863 MacPherson wrote, “I remain a photographer to this day, without any feeling that by doing so I have . . . forfeited my claim to the title of artist.”

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