Giacomo Caneva, Artist and Pioneer of Photography

If the historiography of Italian photography owes the identification of Giacomo Caneva (1813-1865) as the “precursor of photography in Rome” to Silvio Negro, albeit accompanied by a rather immature and unflattering assessment, it is undoubtedly Piero Becchetti who conducted the first in-depth study into Caneva’s life and photographic corpus from his departure from his native Padua – after training at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice – to his 1838 arrival and subsequent career in Rome.