Immagini di luce: l’Accademia delle Scienze napoletana e i primi esperimenti di dagherrotipia scientifica,

On February 6th 1839 the journal «Lucifer» of Naples told the news, discussed in the last session of the Royal Academy of Sciences, about the method to get the first photographic impressions. Only on January Arago had announced Daguerre’s method in Paris. Soon Neapolitan newspapers pointed out this invention, emphasizing both the use in figurative arts and the scientific meaning. On November, Macedonio Melloni, just appointed director of the Meteoro-logical Observatory and Conservatory of Arts and Crafts, read a report about photographic method. The report was published in the “Proceedings of the R. Academy of Sciences” of Naples: it can be considered the first Italian scientific text on daguerreotype. In Naples the centre of scientific re-search on photography became the Academy. The discussion about the new method of “writing with light” took, immedi-ately, two paths: that of the popular diffusion of a figurative technique to depict landscape and make portraits, and that of scientific research, directed both to improve the optical instrument and to identify chemical agents to better impress plates. Applications in other sciences, such as astronomy, geology and natural history, were also investigated. The aim of this contribution is to present an organic analysis of unknown aspects of the spread of daguerreotype in the Kingdom of Naples from 1839 to 1850