Five Foot Photograph of the Coliseum in Rome, attributed to early architectural photographer Tommaso Cuccioni. Collection of the Providence Athenaeum. Gift of Albert Jenkins Jones, 1860. Rediscovered, May 2010.

The Providence Athenaeum recently rediscovered a five-foot wide photograph of the Coliseum in Rome attributed to the early architectural photographer, Tommaso Cuccioni (d.1864). Cuccioni was especially noted for his exceptional large-format photographs and exhibited these at an early and important 1859 exhibition of art photography in Paris, held alongside the official Salon. This very contemporary photograph was sent from Italy to the Providence Athenaeum in 1860 by Benefit Street expatriate Albert Jenkins Jones (1821-1887), and was displayed for many years hanging in the main gallery of the Athenaeum. It was rediscovered in remote storage in May 2010 by Archivist Catherine Wodehouse. This five foot photograph is rare and possibly the only surviving example of pre-1860 monumental photography.

This colossal early photograph will be on view from September 1-23, 2010 in the Providence Athenaeum’s Philbrick Rare Book Room as the centerpiece of the exhibition, “The Rhode Island Art Association & the Ecology of Culture in Pre-Civil War RI”, guest curated by Nancy Austin. Rediscovering Jones’s 1860 gift allows us to look again at the dawn of the art world in Providence during those fervent seven years before the Civil War.

Please join Celebrity Guide Nancy Austin on Gallery Night September 16th at the Providence Athenaeum from 5-7pm. Please note that around 6:30 she will discuss the exhibition and then at 7pm lead a group on a one hour walking tour where she will be presenting her latest discoveries about the dawn of the art world in Providence.

For more information, please see www.AustinAlchemy.com/coliseum and www.providenceathenaeum.org