Fratelli Alinari is one of the world's oldest

photographic Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employed in many ...

firms, founded in

Florence, Italy Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence was a centre of medieval European t ...

in 1852. Its archives contain 5.5 million photographs, ranging from

daguerreotype Daguerreotype was the first publicly available photography, photographic process, widely used during the 1840s and 1850s. "Daguerreotype" also refers to an image created through this process. Invented by Louis Daguerre and introduced worldwid ...

s to modern digital photos from around the world.

Founding

In 1852, Leopoldo Alinari founded a photographic studio. His brothers Giuseppe and Romualdo joined him two years later to establish ''Fratelli Alinari Fotografi Editori'', a photographic workshop dedicated initially to the documentation of notable Italian paintings, sculptures, monuments and architecture. They subsequently expanded the scope of their photographic project to include the towns and landscapes of Italy, as well as

portrait photography Portrait photography, or portraiture, is a type of photography aimed toward capturing the personality of a person or group of people by using effective Photographic lighting, lighting, Painted photography backdrops, backdrops, and poses. A portr ...

and images of national costume. The brothers achieved recognition for the quality of their work, and by 1860 their portrait subjects included the Italian royal family. The three brothers shared the work of running the studio, Romualdo the eldest (1830–1891) ran the administrative aspects of the studio; Leonardo (1832–1865), the middle brother was responsible for business organization including cultural policy; the youngest brother, Giuseppe (1836-1890) was the technical expert. The main subjects of their photographs were architecture, monuments and works of art. They also ran the Alinari publishing house in Italy.

Work

The studio used the

collodion process The collodion process is an early photography, photographic process for the production of grayscale images. The collodion process – mostly synonymized with the term "''wet-plate process''", requires the photographic material to be coated, sensi ...

to produce their negatives. In 1856, the studio produced their first catalogue in print, ''Collection des Vues Monumentales de la Toscane en Photographie par les Frères Alinari'', with a text in French. It included photographic panoramas of Tuscany and its monuments, most particularly those in Arezzo, Florence, Siena and Pisa. In 1855, a selection of these images were shown in the Exposition Universelle, Paris, which firmly established them as important European photographers. The following year, they won a gold medal for an exhibition in

Brussels Brussels, officially the Brussels-Capital Region, (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) is a Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium#Regions, region of Belgium comprising #Municipalit ...

. They continued to exhibit their work throughout Europe, including shows in Vienna, Paris, and Milan.

Today

Alinari is today the oldest company in the world in the field of photography. Alinari holds a photographic ''corpus'', which includes over 5,500,000 pictures of its own, historical and contemporary, ranging from vintage prints, glass plate negatives to film and fotocolors. In 2007, the company opened the Museum of Multimedia and History of Photography (MNAF) is open to the public in

. In order to make the images available to a greater number of persons, Alinari has established an on-line search system of its photographic archives, employing a system of iconographic classification produced in collaboration with the

University of Florence The University of Florence ( Italian: ''Università degli Studi di Firenze'') (in acronym UNIFI) is an Italian public research university located in Florence, Italy. It comprises 12 schools and has around 50,000 students enrolled. History The f ...

with over 330,000 images. 400 new images are added on-line daily. The digitization process is done using a Kodak EverSmart Supreme flatbed scanner and a Leaf/Mamiya 80 megapixels Aptus II 12 80 digital camera back. Color correction is done using Eizo monitors through a fully calibrated system. Color profiling is done using Adobe '98 color space.

Collections

Over 500 photographic prints by the Alinari Brothers are held in the

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), is an art museum located in the Houston Museum District of Houston, Texas. The permanent collection of the museum spans more than 5,000 years of history with nearly 80,000 works from six continents. Follo ...

. Several portraits by the Fratelli Alinari are held in the collection of the

National Portrait Gallery National Portrait Gallery may refer to: * National Portrait Gallery (Australia), in Canberra * National Portrait Gallery (Sweden), in Mariefred *National Portrait Gallery (United States), in Washington, D.C. *National Portrait Gallery, London ...

, London.

Gallery

File:Gebrüder Alinari - Der Aquädukt in Lucca (Zeno Fotografie).jpg, The Aqueduct in Lucca, between 1876 and 1881 File:Ojetti - I Monumenti Italiani e la Guerra (page 156 crop).jpg, I Monumenti Italiani e la Guerra di Ugo Ojetti, Milano, before 1917 File:Gebrüder Alinari - Amor und Psyche von Canova (Zeno Fotografie).jpg, Photograph of

Canova Antonio Canova (; 1 November 1757 – 13 October 1822) was an Italian Neoclassical sculptor, famous for his marble sculptures. Often regarded as the greatest of the Neoclassical artists,. his sculpture was inspired by the Baroque and the clas ...

sculpture,

Cupid and Psyche Cupid and Psyche is a story originally from ''Metamorphoses'' (also called ''The Golden Ass''), written in the 2nd century AD by Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis (or Platonicus). The tale concerns the overcoming of obstacles to the love between Psy ...

, between 1899 and 1913

References and notes

External links

Fratelli Alinari Picture Library and Museum

Alinari Archives at Google Cultural Institute
{{DEFAULTSORT:Alinari, Fratelli Photography companies of Italy Photo archives in Italy Book publishing companies of Italy Mass media in Florence Publishing companies established in 1852 Companies based in Florence 1852 establishments in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany Italian companies established in 1852