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Filippo Lais, Bust of a Young Woman with a White Headscarf, c. 1860/70

Alte PinakothekKunstareal, Maxvorstadt

Images of People: Portrait and Genre Photographs from the Dietmar Siegert Collection

Now showing13 October 2026 – 31 January 2027Ticketed, see website

Around fifty 19th-century Italian portrait and genre photographs, from carte-de-visite portraits to colorized regional scenes.

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The Naples street vendors in this show never worked a street for their pictures. Fratelli De Luca shot the nut seller, the water seller and a street kitchen against the same studio backdrop, which is how the curators can tell.

There are around 50 cartes de visite, the business-card-sized portraits the museum calls early photography's "killer application", plus about a dozen larger prints from the Roman Campagna, Naples and Sicily. You get the last Bourbon kings of Naples and Rome's pope-loyal nobles next to Garibaldi, Verdi and Cavour, then hand-coloured costume models, Naples street life and late studies by Plüschow and von Gloeden. Munich even has a local in the Naples section: Queen Marie Sophie was born a duchess in Bavaria.

It fills Room IIc, on the ground floor of the east wing, one of the Neue Pinakothek's guest shows during its renovation. The museum stays open until 8pm on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. The whole Siegert collection, about 10,000 photographs, is online with deep zoom at fotografie-in-italien.pinakothek.de.

Look for

  • The Bourbon family portrait

    Look for Queen Marie Sophie posing with King Francis II and his brothers, taken by Naples court photographer Alphonse Bernoud around 1859/61, just before the dynasty fell.

  • Hand-coloured women of the Campagna

    Stefano Lais's women from Albano, Ponzano and the Ciociaria are tinted so richly they read as miniature paintings, though he shot them in his Roman studio.

  • Fratelli De Luca's street trades

    A nut seller, a water seller, a street kitchen and a translator for people who couldn't write, each posed against the same studio backdrop.

  • Sommer's lazzarone

    Giorgio Sommer's Naples poor man sits surrounded by his few possessions, near street boys in worn, tattered clothes.

  • Breaking flax in the Alban Hills

    Filippo Belli photographed two men and a woman at work outdoors around 1875, in hard daylight that looks far less staged than the studio cards.

Good for

  • An Hour Or Less
  • Locals Who've Seen It All
  • Nerding Out

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