Naples: View of Capri from Massa Lubrense, ca. 1860 – 1865

About the Work

On his wanderings in Southern Italy, Giorgio Sommer concentrated more than most of his photographer colleagues on the beauty of the landscape. He had the help of natural circumstances to arrive at this especially striking shot of Capri, an island in the Gulf of Naples that is still as popular with tourists as ever. The olive trees at the left and right frame it in such a way as to create a picture within a picture. The use of treetops for this purpose is a classical element of landscape painting. The two barefoot boys at the left not only enliven the composition but also serve as scale figures and underscore the vastness of natural setting. At the same time, they point to another area of Sommer’s repertoire: genre scenes from what was imagined to be typical everyday life in Southern Italy.