As a testimony to how Maria Adriana Prolo documented every possible aspect of the seventh art, this collection of 9,000 apparatuses and accessories tells a wide-ranging story. We are taken from the archaeology of cinema to the history of photography, sound recording and reproduction, all the way to the history of cinema itself.
Pre-Cinema
Shadow puppets, mondo niovi, optical boxes, optical views, magic lanterns, magic lantern slides, phenakistoscopes, thaumatropes and praxinoscopes are just some of the fascinatingly and often bizarrely named cinema devices that populate the variegated universe of the archaeology of 18th and 19th century cinema. This extremely rich patrimony is primarily made of two distinct collections, the collection created by Maria Adriana Prolo and that of the English brothers John and William Barnes.
The Prolo collection
The Prolo collection came to life in 1942, shortly after the birth of the Museum. The first items in the collection, two magic lanterns, were bought for curiosity’s sake alone. The first was purchased for just 15 Lira (equal to 7.50 €) at the local flea market, Balôn. The second, with its projection slides “12 slides in movement,” was sold by an individual for a total price of 1,300 Lira (equal to 644 €)! From that moment on, interest in these apparatuses has grown ever stronger. The collection has since been enriched with many rare examples, including the occasional one-of-a-kind piece, such as a magic lantern from the second half of the 18th century. The lantern belonged to a noble family from Verona and includes its complement of 46 original oil painted glass panes of remarkable artistic quality.
The collection of eighteenth century optical boxes and mondo niovi can only increase in value. One of the most important collections of its type in the world, it includes the mondo niovo bought by Maria Adriana Prolo in Venice in 1950. This precious object, which she purchased from the antiques dealer Riccardo Asta, was Prolo’s “first great folly” and cost 257,000 Lira (equal to 4.250 €), obliging her to take out a loan from the Bank of Italy. Today this splendid artifact is considered to be one of the most precious in the world, thanks to the excellence of its craftsmanship. The collection also includes a nucleus of 500 optical views, most of which were designed to recreate a “night effect” or a “day effect” on the image they represent.
The Barnes Collection
In 1994 the National Cinema Museum of Torino secured its primacy in the field of pre-cinema apparatuses with the purchase of the prestigious collection belonging to the English brothers John and William Barnes. This acquisition increased the size of the already large collection with materials of predominantly English origin.
Most significantly, it augmented the collection of magic lanterns and glass projection slides with many important examples, including a series of late 18th century “Bull’s eye” lanterns, some models by the renowned artisan Philip Carpenter and an important series of glass slides dedicated to the exploration of the Artic by C.W. Collins. These last slides were made for the Royal Polytechnic Institution, a Mecca of projections during the 19th century.
The Museum’s heritage has been further enriched by the arrival of slides which create the illusion of movement using a sequence of static images. These images include some of the first discs for phenakistoscopes and some examples of zoetropes.
Cinema
The collection of apparatuses and cinematographic accessories is formed, in its bulk, by the movie cameras, projectors and workshop equipment that let filmmakers create a film and project it onto cinemas screens. This collection tells the story of the technological evolution of cinematography right up to the present day, but it pays particular attention to the period of silent cinema in Torino. There are, in fact, cameras and various other items of cinematographic equipment that were used to create films in Torino’s own film studios, Itala, Ambrosio, Zollinger and Pozzo & Manina. Some of the apparatuses use techniques that have long been obsolete, such as a machine for adding color to film that was made by Segundo de Chomón before color film had been invented. The collection bought by Maria Adriana Prolo at the beginning of the 1960s from collaborators of Roberto Troncone, a pioneer of Neapolitan cinema, illustrates Italian and foreign cinematography of that era.
A series of 35mm “linea azzurra” projectors made by Microtecnica of Torino offers a symbolic glimpse of Italy’s cinemas during the period in which sound films had already superseded their silent cousins.
Besides the set of professional cameras and technical equipment that have been used over the years, there is also a much-appreciated collection of machines made for “narrow gauge” film that bears witness to the exceptional progress that was made in amateur filmmaking, starting when Vittorio Calcina - the Lumière brothers’ cameraman in Torino – invented the CineParvus system that reduced film from 35mm to 17.5mm.
Photography
This rich collection of photographic cameras, enlargers, viewers and accessories (pose time tables, blank photographic paper and plates, basins and tongs for developing, flexible shutter releases, frames and so on) documents the birth of photography and its subsequent development.
Some of these items have quite curious stories behind them. This is the case of a rare example of what was known as a “photographic wheelbarrow,” which was used in the second half of the nineteenth century by itinerant photographers as a type of study-workshop. It acted as a darkroom and as a means for transporting the bulky equipment needed to take photographs. The example on view at the Mole Antonelliana was discovered by Maria Adriana Prolo in a farmhouse in Val Pellice, where it was being temporarily used by the farmer as a chicken coop. Some of the most important artifacts in the collection include numerous examples of the very first daguerreotype experiments conducted in Torino. This invention marked the official birth of photography and its most illustrious representatives, Enrico Federico Jest and his son Carlo, lived in Torino..
There are also other models that exemplify the pioneering spirit of those times, such as the camera made for taking and immediately developing photos that was created by the Frenchman Dubroni around 1860, or a highly unusual camera invented by the Parisian optician Hermagis which could be disassembled and placed in a case to be carried on a strap on excursions. Last but not least, there is a camera made in 1890 by the optician and photo-mechanic Bardelli; this “super-light” (at least for the era) camera was created for alpine excursions and weighs less than three kilograms, accessories included. There are also some elegant examples of English design, the most important of which are the Thornton-Pìckard, a large and beautiful collection of terrace cameras and many other examples of folding cameras. These apparatuses bear witness to an age when photography began to be used to safeguard family and social memories and as a marker of time itself. The Museum’s collection of stereoscopic cameras and stereoscope viewers is also worth mentioning here because they are a testimony to one of the great dreams of the early 19th century that came true, the third dimension.
Sound reproduction
The world of sound reproduction, from its beginnings to the second half of the twentieth century, is represented by a wide range of devices: gramophones, phonographs, record players, music boxes, radios, player pianos, an organ, amplifiers, microphones, tape recorders, loudspeakers and, finally, tapes and reels for recording. Although gramophones and old-fashioned radios are undoubtedly fascinating, and although vinyl players may spark the memories of many viewers, the prize place in this collection goes to the most historically significant piece: Edison’s Dictaphone, known as the Ediphone, the ancestor of modern recording equipment. |
In detail
Extra Info
Contacts
Raffaella Isoardi
Tel. +39 011 8138 528
Fax +39 011 8138 575
isoardi@museocinema.it
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