[Peasant Couple]
Edmond Lebel French
Not on view
This photograph depicts two models from the Roman Campagna clad in ciocie, distinctive bark sandals worn in the region, and carefully posed outdoors against a blank backdrop. During the nineteenth century, the French Academy in Rome became the epicenter of a new development in genre painting based around the figure of the Italian peasant. In order to capture on canvas realistic details of costume and physiognomy, artists working in this mode sketched from life and used the documentary evidence of photographs for reference. Both painters and photographers hired models from among the groups of peasants and day laborers that gathered on the Spanish Steps looking for work.