Edmondo Behles
View of the Roman Forum from the Capitoline Hill, Looking East

Public Domain

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Artist Edmondo BehlesGerman, 1841–1921

CultureGerman

Titles

View of the Roman Forum from the Capitoline Hill, Looking East

Date1860s

Place depictedRome, Italy

MediumAlbumen silver print from glass negative

DimensionsImage: 10 11/16 × 15 3/16 in. (27.1 × 38.6 cm)
Mount: 19 1/8 × 24 7/8 in. (48.6 × 63.2 cm)

Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by Mr. and Mrs. Alvin S. Romansky by exchange, The Manfred Heiting Collection

Object number2004.303

Not on view

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Department

Photography

Special Collections

Manfred Heiting Collection of Photography

Object Type

PHOTOGRAPHS

DescriptionOnce
the center of Western civilization and political power, the Roman Forum had, by
the Middle Ages, become a cow pasture, its once grand temples, palaces, and
civic buildings quarried for their materials and allowed to fall into decay.
Beginning in the Renaissance, a new appreciation arose for the beauty of what
remained, and, by the time photography arrived in the mid-19th century, a
Romantic cult of ruins made the Forum a mandatory stop on the aristocratic
Grand Tour—a picturesque landscape prompting meditation on the passage of time
and the fate of man and his achievements. For those fortunate enough to visit, pictures
such as this one provided a way of remembering what they had seen (just as
photography does for modern travelers), and, for those who could not make the
journey themselves, such pictures provided the virtual experience of “armchair
travel.”
Provenance[Manfred Heiting, Malibu, California]; purchased by MFAH, 2004.
Exhibition History"The Grand Tour: Rome, from the Heiting Collection", Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, lower Brown Gallery of Law Building, October 3, 2005 thru January 18, 2006
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks

Marked in pencil, recto, lower left of mount: X
Embossed stamp, lower right corner of mount: Edmondo Behles / Studio Mario di Fiori / Magazzino corro 96 / Roma

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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