Album: Full leather with gilt and blind tooled decorations, ribbed spine. Gilt tooled on top cover: B. F. Barge / Italy / 1898.

Album Dimensions: 15.5 x 11.5 x 3 inches, about 100 doubled leaves with 166 mounted photos and 15 unmounted photos

Leather covered silk-lined fitted box with B.F. Barge / Italy / 1898 gilt impressed on top: 16.5 x 12.5 x 3.5 inches

Page Dimensions: 14.5 x 10.5 inches

Print Dimension (typical): 9.75 x 7.75 inches

A magnificent unique souvenir gilt and blind tooled leather album of 181 nineteenth century albumen photographs, 175 of which are by Giacomo Brogi or his son Carlo, and 6 photographs are from the Fratelli Alinari studio.
The photographs show the topography, art, architecture, and antiquities of Florence, Italy, between 1870 and about 1890. The one-of-a kind album was commissioned and created in 1898, but many of the photographs were created by Giacomo Brogi between 1870 and 1880. The prints are all on thin paper designed for mounting in an album. All are in a large format (approx. 10 x 8 inches).

166 of the Photographs are mounted on rectos and versos of double leaved pages with slits for insertion of the corners of the prints; 15 photos between the blank pages at the end of the album are loose. Some of loose photos may be duplicates of mounted photos.

Most photos have captions on the lower edges with the photographer's stock number, title, and studio name: 32 photos have G. Brogi; 123 photos have Edizioni Brogi and 6 photos have Alinari; On about 20 photos the studio name is faded, obscured by corner being inserted, or not present.

The great majority of the photos bear a stock number below 8000 which indicates they were done by Giacomo Brogi.

About 30 of the photos are topographical, about 30 are architectural and most of the others show works of art in Florence (paintings, sculptures, etc.)

The stock numbers of many of the photos are hidden under the insertion slots but of the ones that are visible, 80 photographs bear Giacomo Brogi stock numbers (i.e. below 8000), and about 20 have numbers over 8000 (i.e are from the Carlo Brogi studio). It is probable that most of the obscured numbers are below 8000.

Giacomo Brogi
Italian engraver and photographer. After working as an apprentice with the engraver Achille Paris during the 1850s, Brogi turned to photography, and established his first studio in Florence in 1856. He produced a series of photographs of the Holy Land in 1862, and his catalogue of photographs of Florence and Tuscany appeared in 1878. The following year, in 1879, he began photographing the antiquities and mummies of Pompei. Brogi catered to the tourist trade, with shops in Florence, Rome, and Naples. He exhibited his work widely throughout Europe, and was named "Photographer of the Emperor" by Umberto I. After his death in 1881, Brogi's son, Carlo, with help from his brother Alfredo, continued to manage the firm.

Benjamin Franklin Barge was an educator who became a businessman and acquired a substantial fortune which allowed him to engage in extensive travel. He lived in Mauch Chunk (now Jim Thorpe), Pennsylvania.

He may have acquired some or all of the photographs in 1880 when he embarked on his second European trip and during which he visited Florence. There is no record of his stopping in Florence in any of his later trips to Europe; note however, that the album cover is marked Italy 1898

“Mr. Barge went through a pleasant country, which grew more and more lovely, until he reached Florence, that hallowed city, so beautiful, so dear to the heart of the artist. Every picture he had fancied, every dream of romance imagined, had been met and surpassed in this city. In merely driving from the station to the hotel he was struck by the noble style of architecture, uniform in solidity, but not curi• ously quaint nor monotonously gloomy; but when, the next morning, he saw the grand palaces, graceful bridges, beautiful towers, noble churches; when he caught glimpses at every turn of the pictures of Nature art could not approach, he could not but show the rare pleasure he enjoyed. In Florence he saw Titian's and Raphael's masterpieces; the first attempts at sculpture of Michael Angelo—so many treasures of art were there; so many places renowned in history. He went to the famous Uffizi Gallery; to him the tribune, the inner sanctuary of this temple of art, contained the richest treasures of sculpture and painting the world had ever seen. He reluctantly left the city and those glorious galleries through which he seemed to have merely glanced, and regretfully deserted the Cascini, with its drives, walks, music, and gayety. When he looked back upon Florence for the last time, he distinguished only the battlemented Palazzo Vecchio, with its fine old tower, and the slender, glistening line of the Arno. Mr. Barge ever after mentioned his first stay in Florence as a season of the most intense delight; knowing how vast was the field for study and recreation, particularly in the lights and shades of art, he left it with feelings of remorse and a determination to speedily return. Rome and Florence, each to him enhanced the beauty of the other, neither losing anything by the comparison.”
Prom account of Barge’s trip to Europe in 1880 in Benjamin F. Barge, 1832-1902: His Life--his Travels By Mrs. Martha Elvia Beck "Mrs. C. Stanley Hurlbut." Philadelphia, 1905.

CONDITION: Photographs: One photo has a short closed tear and one photo has an archivally repaired closed tear; one photo has a small truncated corner and a few of the unmounted prints have a small crease at an edge or corner. Apart from these, all the photographs are complete, clean and intact. Some of the mounted photos have wrinkled corners caused by nonuniform contraction from drying while the corners are constrained and the centers being free.

Album Covers: Fine.

Album Interior: Near Fine. (A few leaves with small smudge or light soil).

Fitted Box: Fair to Good-. (Box is complete and sturdy but the leather at several edges is eroded and chipped. Some of the interior silk lining is stained.)