Henry Cole's European Travels and the Building of the South Kensington Museum in the 1850s

摘要

In January 1859, Henry Cole, the first Director of the South Kensington Museum (from 1899 known as the Victoria and Albert Museum) was in Rome, commissioning the photographer Pietro Dovizielli to produce photographs of buildings in the capital which Cole considered 'suggestive' and 'picturesque'. In the following crucial passage from his travel journal, Cole seems for the first time to become aware that his prolific travelling could be turned to good effect in accumulating architectural sources for use back in South Kensington: The Court [of the Sapienza] is one of the most suggestive for South Kensington that I have seen and it worthily winds up my investigations in that direction. Mr Peacocke, Mr Davies & Mary were all on the alert to hear me say 'highly suggestive' and were ready to call my attention to anything as 'highly suggestive' of Colonnades, Steps, Facades, Obelisks and Fountains likely to be 'suggestive' at S. Kensington. I have ordered forty negatives to be made, and they will be useful also for the Architectural Studies of the Training School. In [them] Dovizielli the Photographer is to show the scale of each one by a three feet white measure. His charge is to be 5 (five) scudi each with the glass.