This exhibition, which presents 64 photos created to illustrate the 1898 edition of the Divine Comedy, is part of a series of shows launched in 2002 with the intention of promoting the collections of the Photographic Department.

The Divina Commedia illustrata was edited by Corrado Ricci in 1898 and was extremely innovative at the time since the illustrations consisted of photographs. It was published in two different editions: the first in instalments in 1896, followed by a complete edition of the three canticas in 1898, illustrated with various “real life” photos, and another edition in 1921.

The photos in this exhibition were produced by Giuseppe Cremoncini for the first edition. In 1916 they were donated to the Photographic Department, which had been founded by Corrado Ricci in 1904. The negatives were probably donated to remind the then Commissioner Giovanni Poggi of the photographer and his premature and tragic death. As things turned out, the collection was actually dismembered during the inventory process, since in the early days of the Photographic Department the inventory was built on topographical criteria, so that the Cremoncini photos were placed in different sections. Luckily the precise list enclosed by Cremoncini himself has made it possible to successfully identify his photos.
The illustration of the national poem has never been an easy feat. Count Giovanni Acquaderni of Bologna, Ricci’s collaborator in the exploit of procuring photos for Dante, put Ricci in touch with Giuseppe Cremoncini in Florence, agreeing that the latter should go all round Tuscany reproducing “towns, castles, valleys and rivers, from Talamone, in Maremma, to Certaldo, from Campi to Chiusi, from the mouth of the Arno to the source of the Tiber”. We can even trace the phases in the creation of the photos of this collection. On 3 November 1893, Acquaderni communicates that Cremoncini has begun work. Giuseppe Cremoncini wrote frequently to Ricci to get details about the places to be photographed.
Cremoncini had to tackle various difficulties in completing his assignment, not least the difficulty of finding the places that Ricci indicated to him. He complained of the bad weather, the impassable roads, the hotels where he had no way of developing his photos, and declared: “I don’t know if you will be pleased with my works, but if not, please make allowances for the fact that I am only an amateur.” By 1894 Cremoncini had completed the assignment for Ricci. 34 photos were published in the illustrated volumes of Dante of 1898.

Giuseppe Cremoncini was born in Florence on 4 March 1869 into the Florentine mercantile middle class. He devoted himself primarily to the family business alongside his father, a renowned and affluent Florentine merchant; continuing the family tradition he worked in the crystal shop situated at no. 16 Via del Proconsolo, just a few steps from the house where he was born. The second-born only son of a numerous family, he divided his time between shop-keeping and the passion for photography that he began to nurture from a tender age. At the end of the century, photography as a purely dilettante activity was the prerogative of a select few, since being still very new and costly as an art, it was practiced at amateur level only by the relatively wealthy.
The work commissioned by Corrado Ricci can be conceived as an occasional but dominating interest, focused on a cultural and artistic context, with no other purpose than that of placing his technical and photographic expertise at the service of a noble enterprise. It was an important opening for the eager young man, full of enthusiasm and energy, but was sadly destined to be his only experience in the field. A cruel fate in fact awaited this youth who had just begun to approach the art of photography: on the afternoon of 31 December 1897 a tragic accident that occurred in the storeroom of his shop, while Giuseppe was lighting a gas lamp – an operation that he used to perform with the shop assistant to illuminate the shop – killed him on the spot.
Giuseppe Cremoncini’s photos, the only evidence left to us of this young man who died at the age of just 28, illustrate the desire to explore and document the Dante sites as far as possible, with an effort of research and framing of shot that offers the most extraordinarily innovative mode of approaching the poem, while also underscoring the impetus given to the use of photography in cultural operations of the highest level.