Metropolitan Museum of Art Gilman Collection, Purchase, Mrs. Walter Annenberg and The Annenberg Foundation Gift, 2005, Accession Number: 2005.100.570
Curatorial description
Since 1760, writers and artists of all disciplines and nationalities have met to converse and drink espresso at the famous Caffé Greco in Rome. In 1848 Caneva moved from Bergamo to Rome and joined a group of like-minded painters at the café interested in the new medium of photography. Thus began the informal first school of photography in Italy. This highly retouched view shows Vesuvius, the volcano responsible for burying the towns of Herculaneum and Pompeii in A.D. 79.
