On loan to The Met The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Baptistery, Florence
Not on view
The Alinari firm, founded in Florence by three brothers (fratelli), Leopoldo (1832–1865), Romualdo (1830–1890), and Giuseppe (1836–1890), was arguably the most important photography studio in nineteenth-century Italy. Leopoldo, the driving force of the enterprise, took up photography around 1852 after apprenticing with the engraver Luigi Bardi, whose shop distributed Fratelli Alinari’s earliest photographs. Initially focused on the architecture and landscape of their native Tuscany, the firm eventually took on the ambitious mission of documenting all of Italy. By the time Leopoldo died in 1865, the business had expanded to include shops in both Florence and Rome, with a catalogue of some forty-eight hundred images that together offer a comprehensive picture of the newly unified nation.
