All of Lecchi's photographs of 1849 Rome were considered to be part of war reportage. But, in reality, his photographic activity in the Rome of 1849 can be grouped into three distinct phases.
The first group of photographs is a series of perspective views of Rome and its monuments. Just like other photographers of the time, Lecchi took pictures of his city’s ancient monuments and traditional tourist destinations: the Roman Forum, the Coliseum, the Arches of Constantine and Septimius Severus, the so-called Tempio di Vesta at the Foro Boario, but also Castel Sant’Angelo, St. John Lateran, Piazza del Popolo.
Probably in the early months of 1849, he took a series of photographs of a more documentary nature. They focus on the Villa Borghese and concern secular trees or buildings such as the Casino Cenci and Casino di Raffaello that will be destroyed for defensive purposes. The dating of these images can be deduced by observing the winter attire of the figures pictured in the salt maps and the state of the vegetation.
The third series of images is intended to document the aftermath of the war events that led to the fall of the Roman Republic on July 3rd, 1849. In them, the photographer fixes the "new ruins" of Rome, both by accomplishing broad overviews and by taking as his subject buildings sometimes taken from multiple vantage points.
In some cases, however, the memory of the war appears not directly through the documentation of the ruins but from the fixing of places that, to those who had participated and to those who remembered the events, immediately recalled the episodes of valor that took place there. This is the case, for example, with the panoramic views of the Leonine Wall or the Acqua Paola Aqueduct.
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All the photographs made by Lecchi in 1849 were considered part of his war reportage. However, looking carefully, also through digitally captured details, we can see that we are clearly dealing with photographs taken at different times of the year.
In the case of the salted papers in the Biblioteca di storia moderna e contemporanea we are clearly faced with at least two photographs taken in a different period from that of the ruins. The first one depicts the Casale Cenci in Villa Borghese and is signed and dated 1849; the other one is related to the Casino di Raffaello located in the same villa, and very likely belongs to the same period. The presence of some completely bare trees, in fact, and the children's clothing itself, shift the date of the shooting to a winter period and thus to the first months of the year. 1849 was a particularly cold year; on March 16th, 1849 Nicola Roncalli noted in his diary «Freddo intenso. Fontane gelate» [Intense cold. Frozen fountains] (Roncalli 1997). In any case, the two photographs must have been taken before the end of the Republic as both buildings were destroyed for defensive purposes. Historian Giuseppe Spada writes that on May 12th, a «commissione per liquidare i danni sofferti da coloro cui eransi distrutte le proprietà» [commission to liquidate the damages suffered by those whose property had been destroyed] was established. Among the buildings demolished “within a radius of about half a mile around the city” [1] he lists the “Villa Borghese and the casini including that of Raphael” [2] (Spada 1870).
Photographs in the Cheney collection relating to the Villa Borghese are also certainly taken during the same period; the winter clothing of the children portrayed is also noticeable in them. In addition, the villa's trees also appear to be still in place. It is certain, however, that they were cut down for defensive purposes as Margaret Fuller, correspondent for the New York Tribune, testifies: “All who have spent happy days in Rome grieve to hear that the wonderful groves of Villa Borghese, the utmost delight and refreshment of citizens, foreigners and children, have been cut down as far as the obelisk [...] The city has had the locks severed that gave grace to its venerable brow. It looks devastated and desecrated” [3] (Fuller 1986). A watercolor and a drawing by François Louis Français, executed in July 1849, also depict the felled trees at Villa Borghese.
Since we are dealing with photographs that are chronologically and thematically distant, we can assume that they are part of two distinct photographic campaigns: one of souvenir views of Rome comparable to the other photographs of Rome in the Bertarelli collection and the Getty Research Institute, the other of documentation of the new ruins. But perhaps it is more plausible to assume that Lecchi had begun a photographic campaign of views of Rome, later changed in intent and visual reality by the precipitating events of the war. The series depicting the monuments of Rome, probably begun during the first months of the year, would later be followed, after July 3rd, by the one documenting the ruins. In fact, the images are set according to a distinct thematic logic: views of Rome and views of the siege sites. To an intermediate phase between the two should belong the photographs of those places, such as the buildings and trees of Villa Borghese, that the Republic had planned to destroy for defensive purposes.
(Maria Pia Critelli)
[1] «nel raggio di circa mezzo miglio intorno alla città»
[2] «Villa Borghese ed i casini compreso quello di Raffaello»
[3] «Tutti coloro che hanno trascorso a Roma giorni felici si dolgono nell’udire che i boschi meravigliosi di Villa Borghese, massimo diletto e ristoro dei cittadini, degli stranieri e dei bambini, sono stati abbattuti fino all’obelisco [...] Alla città sono state recise le ciocche che conferivano grazia alla sua veneranda fronte. Ha un aspetto devastato e profanato»