[Spanish Steps, Rome]
Gustave Eugène Chauffourier French
Not on view
This unconventional depiction of Rome’s famous Spanish Steps contrasts a row of vertical pillars against horizontal bands of shadow to produce a modernist effect. Chauffourier, a French photographer active in Palermo and Naples before settling in Rome in the early 1870s, documented both the tourist sites and the quotidian corners of the newly minted capital of the Kingdom of Italy. His oblique approach, which emphasized the architectural details of staircases, courtyards, and fountains to appeal to the city’s artistic community, was inspired by the earlier work of Carlo Baldassarre Simelli, whose studio Chauffourier took over in 1873.
