Following recent archival research new lines of enquiry have been explored about the personal and professional life of Stefano Lecchi. The photographer was active in Malta with his own studio and in March 1864 portrayed Giuseppe Garibaldi during his controversial visit to the island.
Stefano Lecchi had already been in Malta in 1831 where he married, as his second wife, Maria Anna Rizzo, heiress to some immoveable property inherited from her parents.
Several documents attest the presence of the photographer in Malta between 1854 and 1864 and his involvement in a number of lawsuits.
It is interesting to note that on the back of his cartes-de-visite he placed the coat of arms of the Savoia dynasty, while many of his contemporary photographers active in the island showed that of the British Royal family.
It is certain that the photographer did not die in Malta. Probably he and his wife followed his son Achille to Alexandria in Egypt.
Full text
A camera artist, one absolutely fundamental to the history of photography and of communication, disappears from his native Italy sometime after 1850, presumed dead. But he is not dead. He moved to Malta, established himself on the island and opened a photographic studio here.
Stefano Lecchi was no ordinary photographer. He is the very first person ever to have made a photo-reportage of a war, the first ever to document the destruction of battle and its aftermath, in an organic, cohesive project. There was no one before him, there were thousands after him. His Malta connection was completely unknown so far. What I have established is less fleshed out than I would have wanted it to be, but at least we now face a further Malta chapter in his life, hitherto unknown, and that this new segment of biographical enquiry is now ajar and has to be explored in depth.
There is one antique photograph in the archives of Palazzo Falson, Imdina, whose front intrigued Prof. George Camilleri for his own research interests, but whose back instantly riveted my attention. It is a portrait of Giuseppe Garibaldi in Malta, taken during the hero’s lightening stay on the island in March 1864. The full length portrait of Garibaldi wearing his characteristic flat biretta and wide cloak has a printed back with the imprint, in letterpress: S. LECCHI, Photographer, 141, Strada Stretta, Malta. Then, also printed, is the addition: Taken at the Imperial Hotel, 24 March, 1864. The negative was signed ‘SL’ in black ink in the lower part of the photo, and the initials appear as white in reversed mirror image in the right hand side of the print (Palazzo Falson: O.F.G. Photographic Archives, 1262).
This portrait of Giuseppe Garibaldi proves conclusively that Lecchi was active in Malta as a professional photographer in 1864, and had his own photographic studio, not recorded so far. The first floor of the premises of his atelier, 141, Strait Street, Valletta, is large enough to have been his residence too. Strada Stretta was at that time Malta’s very disreputable red light district, but was also, as I have shown elsewhere, the hotbed of early photographic studios in Malta (Bonello 2015). Many, if not most, of the first professional photographers of Malta opened up for business there. Sometime after Lecchi closed down, his studio was taken over by Edward Grech Cumbo who also used it for his photographic business over several years. Today, with the door number recently changed to 167, the premises house the professional office of Notary Frans Micallef, my good friend and university classmate.
So far, Stefano Lecchi was known for his war scenes and landscape photographs, and not a single portrait attributable to him had been found and identified. The Palazzo Falson Garibaldi is his first documented portrait, important mostly as a hitherto unknown work of Lecchi, but also because the sitter was Garibaldi himself. The Italian general became the darling of portrait photographers and his images are not lacking, but finding a new one, and taken during his lightening visit to Malta, adds something quite relevant to his iconographic corpus.
It is ironic that this is not the first time the portrait has come to light. The Maltese committee of the Società Dante Alighieri had, in 1961, organized a sizeable exhibition in the Aula Magna of the old University, to commemorate the first centenary of the unification of Italy. Olof Gollcher, of Palazzo Falzon, had generously lent this original photo portrait of Garibaldi to the organizers. The irony is that I was actually very much involved with the setting up of that exhibition, and I had handled all the exhibits on show, including that unique image (Bonello 1963). But the importance of the telling inscription at the back had totally eluded me when I saw it in 1961. We had valued the front, but disregarded the flipside. The penny dropped only recently, when Prof. George Camilleri roped me in in connection with his own research.
Stefano Lecchi, son of Antonio, was born in a small urban settlement next to Milan in 1804 and grew to be a minor painter and a bold pioneer of photography. His inquisitive mind led him to experiment with original techniques and refinements in the camera. He seemed to have started by following the French Daguerre system, in which there was no negative, and so only one, high quality, positive image could be made. He actually discovered and promoted the first colour tinting of daguerrotypes. But soon he switched to the British, Fox Talbot, alternative of photography, eventually to prevail universally. This was based on a negative, from which any number of (lower quality) positive images could be produced. He perfected the calotype to the point that Calvert Jones and George Bridges, both pioneer British photographers with a strong Malta connection, remained impressed by Lecchi and his work.
Jones and Bridges were in constant correspondence with the inventor of the calotype, William Fox Talbot, and both lived in Malta for a considerable time; theirs are the very first calotype images of Malta known so far. They both knew Lecchi and his work which they admired. George Bridges told Fox Talbot that Lecchi was highly esteemed by his contemporaries both for his ability to obtain a clear sky without spotting and for the short exposure times which he favoured. He “obtained excellent results, even using poor quality paper. I myself have seen him making fourteen photographs in a single morning in Pompeii without a single error” (Sciolari 2015).
Lecchi travelled quite extensively – to the south of France, to Rome and to Naples where he was commissioned by King Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies to photograph the spectacular ruins of Pompeii.
He is best known for the extensive war reportage of 1849 which records through a large number of images (44 so far known) the landscape of the deadly struggle between the French forces on the one hand, and the supporters of the failed Roman Republic on the other. They are the very first photographic documentation in history of the devastation of war, with shelled palaces, destroyed landmarks, shrapnel-pockmarked buildings and a general air of desolation. Very few copies of his pioneering war albums are known to have survived, bought mostly by the defeated supporters of a united Italy.
The photographer married Maria Anna Rizzo and the couple had four children: Achille, Mario, Antonio and Adelaide, who entered a convent in 1858. In Rome the family lived in via del Corso, and then in via del Babuino, via dei Greci and via Mario dei Fiori, all roads favourite with the extensive native and foreign art colony settled in Rome. He is known to have been an assiduous client of that magnet for artists in Rome, the Caffe Greco in via dei Condotti, still thriving today as a tourist trap. At some point, something dreadful happened to him. What it was exactly is not known so far. In a contemporary biographical note, Augusto Castellani says “the misfortunes which hit him prevented him from perfecting further his method which is not devoid of merits in some results”. I believe I now know what this unexplained misfortune was.
Then Lecchi disappears completely from the radar, and is believed to have died.
The historic and controversial visit of Garibaldi to Malta in March 1864 split the island in two. The British generally, and a small section of the Maltese liberals welcomed him with emotion and enthusiasm. The majority, the more church-oriented, opposed him – he was the revolutionary who had taken up arms against the pope in his campaigns to unite the various states of a fractured country, including the Papal States. In Malta, the intelligentsia generally favoured the emancipation of Italy, but at the same time had a strong emotional allegiance to the papacy. Hence the conflict, acrimonious and violent. Numerically, the supporters of the Papa-Re in Malta, by far outnumbered those of the unification of Italy. The British, in the United Kingdom and in Malta had an unqualified hero worship for Garibaldi, with the exception of a very few ultra-conservative Catholics.
When news of Giuseppe Garibaldi landing in Malta on March, 23, 1864 spread in the island, his Maltese and Italian supporters on the island organized a loud welcome, with addresses and courtesy visits. Baroness Angelica Testaferrata Abela presented an Address signed by over 300 well-wishers (others say 190). The rest of the population observed a glacial, hostile silence, broken by the occasional hiss and abbasso. The general and his two sons Menotti and Ricciotti lodged at the Imperial Hotel in Strait Street, corner with St Lucy Street, only a few doors up the road from Lecchi’s studio. They only left the hotel to catch the evening steamer. The hotel later put up a marble plaque in the entrance to commemorate this visit. Enemy action destroyed the hotel in WW2, and the Embassy cinema later replaced it.
Lecchi obviously obtained permission to photograph Garibaldi inside the hotel, and had the backs of his studio’s photo-mounts overprinted with an imprint to record the date and the place the photo was taken. That fact that this imprint was, quite exceptionally, in English rather than in Italian, shows that Lecchi believed that his main market for those Garibaldi portraits would be the British in Malta rather than the Maltese.
Garibaldi’s surprise visit to Malta, not unexpectedly, split the island in two. Those who held the hero in reverential awe, exalted; the others demeaned the significance of the event. The Portafoglio Maltese, a conservative paper which had for some time been edited by Tito Vespasiano Micciarelli, a spy in the pay of the Austrian-Neapolitan-Russian secret services, promoted the papal supremacy in both temporal and spiritual matters, and had a scathing account of the visit (Il Portafoglio Maltese, March 26, 1864). I am reproducing parts of a translation into English which appeared in the London Catholic periodical The Tablet. “Early in the morning of the 23rd (March) several persons showed a curiosity to see this man (Garibaldi), and gathered accordingly about the hotel, while others introduced themselves to him; but most of these were English and Italians residing here, and some were officers of the garrison and of the navy as well as a few English ladies, and about half a dozen Maltese heroines”.
The paper highlighted “the antipathy and aversion which the people profess for this man”. Respectable persons from all parties had to strive their utmost to calm down the people “so as to prevent the storm which was about to burst”. The newspaper noted that Garibaldi “not to disturb the public peace, did not show himself in the street, but remained shut up in the hotel as if he was a prisoner, and went on board the Ripon, on which he was to leave when the British steamer had hardly entered into the port at an hour when the people could not be aware of his hurried departure from the hotel, three hours before the hour at which it had purposely been reported that he was to leave, after two hours of vain search to find a carriage, which nobody would hire out to him”.
The “address of the Maltese” presented to Garibaldi by Baroness Testaferrata Abela was, in reality signed by “Maltese, English and foreigners, put together with much trouble”. The Portafoglio adds that “forty of the same youths went on board the Bulldog to await his leaving the port, to express their sympathy with him, and were hissed both on going out and their returning.” Commenting editorially, the newspaper protested strongly against the feeling expressed in the Address, calling it “abusive, false and scandalous, because it is opposed to the feelings of the Maltese people, who profess only antipathy and aversion for the calumniator and defamer of the Papacy” ( (The Tablet, April 16, 1864).
But Lecchi’s presence in Malta at this time is also manifested in a petition, signed by a large number of Italian residents on the island, the original of which is held in a private collection and which has been researched and will soon be published by Prof. George Camilleri who very graciously allowed me to examine it.
A short while before the Garibaldi photograph, Achille Lecchi and Stefano Lecchi had put their signatures to this document (Camilleri 2015). Their presence there confirms, firstly, that Lecchi was in Malta with his eldest son Achille, and secondly, that both were actively involved in Risorgimento politics on the side of the liberal, pro-Italian-unity side of the divide. But most of all Stefano Lecchi’s signature tells us what the “misfortune” that had befallen him was. It is an almost illegible, scrawny, trembling signature, very different from the bold, assertive signature on his Roman photographs. My youthful studies in comparative graphology leave me with no doubt that the person who wrote it had suffered a crippling stroke.
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Since I first published my essay on Lecchi in February 2016 (Bonello 2016), two new streams of research have fed substantially our knowledge of this great pioneer. I have explored more archives, and so has Stefano Caccialanza (Caccialanza 2017). With some rather amazing results. These reveal that Lecchi had already been in Malta in 1831, and it was here that he married Maria Anna Rizzo on April 24, in the parish church of Porto Salvo, St Dominic, Valletta. Maria Anna’s sister, Epifania, had already married a Florentine, Anastasio (or Atanasio Pini) in the same Valletta church on January 30, 1825. The Rizzos sisters born in Palermo must have settled in Malta several years before Stefano married. This was Lecchi’s second marriage, as the certificate refers to him as the widower of Laura Grammatico. Lecchi’s mother was Giuseppa Rossi.
Although the contracts state that the two Rizzo sisters were born in Palermo, in arbitration and court proceedings between the two siblings Epifania is referred to as ‘figlia di Nicola Rizzo Maltese’.
On February 11, 1854, Stefano took his wife to notary Paolo Carosi in Rome, and she signed a power of attorney in his favour.
Notarial contracts and court cases document Lecchi’s presence in Malta for at least ten years, between 1854 and 1864, much earlier and longer than had been assumed before. A picture of financial difficulties emerges, with Lecchi hounded by creditors. I have only been through the records of some notaries. Others may contain additional information.
On March 23, 1854, he appears before Notary Giuseppe Antonio Parodi in Valletta to acknowledge, in his own name and on behalf of his wife, a debt of £20 sterling in favour of Salvatore Said, which he bound himself to repay with 6% interests, within six months (NAM Parodi 1854). On July 20, 1854 Notary Rossignaud publishes another constitution of debt between Lecchi and Giovanni Busuttil for £48. On 17 October, the notary draws up a protest for a bill of exchange dishonoured by Stefano Lecchi residing at ... Strada Stretta, Valletta (the notary left a blank in lieu of the number, but it is safe to assume it was No. 141). The next day, Stefano borrows £7. 10s. from Giuseppe Vella in the records of the same notary. He is borrowing again the following year, this time from Paolo Busuttil (NAM Rossignaud).
But Stefano Lecchi’s wife owned some immoveable property in Malta, inherited from her parents, which eventually gave him some respite. This was one undivided half of the house 10, Strada Britannica (also Strada Botanica or Strada Giardini) Floriana, and a garden in St Julian’s, 6, Strada Collegio. He sold these off on May 3, 1855 to Angelo Caruana for the price of £300, delegating the Notary to pay his creditors from the proceeds. Those were: Lecchi’s litigation lawyer, Dr Lorenzo Xuereb (Ganado 2015). Other creditors included the Notary himself, Margherita Pace, the heirs of Giovanni Busuttil, Giuseppe Vella, Maria widow Busuttil. The meagre balance, (less than £44) after payment of these debts, was to go to Lecchi and his absent wife (NAM Parodi 1855).
Stefano appears again in the contract drawn up by Notary Carlo Curry on November 26, 1860, by which Concetta Caruana widow of Angelo, sold to the Reverend Charles Popham Miles of the Protestant College, the small garden in St Julian’s she had acquired from Lecchi (NAM Curry).
In Malta Stefano Lecchi found himself heavily involved in court litigation. I have traced four cases, all related to his wife’s inheritance. Although the court files are quite voluminous, they add next to nothing to our knowledge of Lecchi the photographer. The first two cases were instituted by Stefano as attorney of his absent wife Maria Anna and by Pietro Ferrante, as attorney of her sister Epifania, widow of Augusto Autin or Autine. In the principal lawsuit the sisters sued the goldsmith Felice Attard by libel procedure.
A sad story lurks behind this. The spouses Nicola and Antonia Rizzo, parents of the two sisters, had made a joint will on June 23, 1839, leaving the surviving spouse the usufruct of the estate until he or she died, and their two daughters as heirs as to one half each. They also willed that the survivor would forfeit the usufruct should he or she remarry. Which is exactly what the old widow Antonia Rizzo did. The young jeweller Felice Attard charmed his way into her affections and took over all the estate, including the business run from the shop 281, Strada Reale, Valletta.
Feeling defrauded, the two sisters sued their mother’s second husband after she died. The Civil Court gave judgement on November 29, 1854, and the case ended in the Court of Appeal on March 23, 1855.
But then the two sisters fell out between themselves. Stefano Lecchi on behalf of his wife Maria Anna sued Epifania Autin. At first Maria Anna and Epifania had agreed to an amicable arbitration to settle the differences between them “to avoid enormous costs”; they even drew up a formal arbitration agreement in the records of Notary Stefano Antonio Micallef on October 2, 1854. But when the arbiters found against her, Epifania claimed the nullity of the arbitration and opposed the enforcement of the award. The judge of the Civil Court, found in favour of Lecchi on July 9, 1855, but the Court of Appeal, on November 9, 1855, overturned his judgement.
Meanwhile Epifania had sued Stefano as attorney of her sister Maria Anna for the costs of the court expert’s fees (in the case against Attard), which she had given Stefano Lecchi to pay, but which Stefano had used for other purposes and the lawyer Dr Xuereb had then forked out of his own pocket. Lecchi admitted the claim and Judge Antonio Micallef on May 29, 1855 condemned him to pay his sister-in-law, with costs (All these court cases and judgements are housed in the National Archives, Imdina).
Roberto Caccialanza’s research has also unearthed a second carte-de-visite portrait taken at the Stefano Lecchi studio in Strada Stretta No. 141, now in the Ruggero Pini collection. The unidentified sitter wrote a handwritten dedication dated June 17, 1866. A chair identical to the one shown in the Lecchi portrait, appears as a prop in the cartes-de-visite of James Conroy, whose studio was also in Strada Stretta, No. 56, though Lecchi’s own studio was later used by a Maltese photographer, Edward Grech Cumbo. While many contemporary photographers working in Malta at that time sported the coat of arms of the British royal family on the backs of their photo-mounts, Lecchi’s carte-de-visite appears to be the only one with the arms of the kings of Savoy, in rather crude woodcut, a further confirmation of his political allegiances.
I have not, so far, been able to establish when Stefano and Achille Lecchi left Malta, after setting up the photographic studio in Strait Street, Valletta, though a more intense trawl through the National Archives may yet reveal those dates. What is certain is that Stefano Lecchi did not die in Malta. An exhaustive search at the Public Registry has confirmed that. Where did he go from here? Very likely he followed his son, the painter Achille Lecchi who was with him in Malta, to Alexandria in Egypt. His widow Maria Anna died there on May 9, 1882, followed by Achille, in 1898.
(Giovanni Bonello)