Cancelleria

This photograph comes from a novel series on important Roman monuments in which each image depicts a single story of a building’s elevation. Simelli issued both individual prints and vertical groupings that allow the viewer to visually ascend the structure. In this example, the ground level of the Renaissance palazzo’s famed travertine facade serves as a proscenium for the activities of a fruit vendor, whose ghostly presence appears as a result of the long exposure. The print attests to the endurance of Simelli’s career in Rome; it was made by Gustave Eugène Chauffourier, a French photographer who acquired and reprinted Simelli’s negatives beginning in 1873.