COVE

Described by Murray in the 1858 edition of his guidebook as one of “the three principle artists in photography at Rome” (Crawford 360), Robert MacPherson, whose work is pictured here, was the first photographer to be granted access to, and given permission to document the interior of, the Vatican Palace. In discussing exposure times dictated by the collodio-albumen technique—which was best suited for subjects requiring long exposure—he employed in the process, he stated that ”[w]here the light was deficient…in one or two cases, even an exposure of two days was necessary to produce a good negative” (Crawford 360). Despite the challenges involved in photographing objects up close and poorly lit—such as those in the Vatican sculpture galleries—for which, by MacPherson’s own estimation, “two hours were required” (Crawford 360), by 1860 he had reported how far his project to photograph both every work in the Vatican, as well as those in every significant collection in Rome had progressed, and boasted that he “shall have upward of a hundred subjects from that gallery alone the Cream of the Vatican [sic]” (Crawford 363).