Giorgio Sommer, born in Frankfurt in 1834 and active in Naples from 1856, was one of Europe’s most prolific early photographers. Over 30 years, he produced thousands of images of archaeological ruins, landscapes, art objects and portraits, up to being appointed official photographer of King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy.

Sommer visited Malta around 1860 and took several pictures of Valletta and of Grand Harbour. One photo in particular depicts the Lower Barrakka Gardens and the wharf and includes a rare photographic depiction of Ġnien is-Sultan, the Grandmaster’s Garden, later destroyed by the British to build Lascaris Battery.

One exemplary of this photograph was digitised by the German digital library Zeno.org with the title Santa Barbara Bastei bei Malta. Another was preserved in the archive of the University of Leiden, in the Netherlands. It came from the private journal of the mariner Henricus Nijgh, who had visited Malta on board the corvette Prince Maurits der Nederlanden on October 10, 1862.

The same photograph was preserved in the archive of the University of Leiden, in the Netherlands.

Most interestingly, this photograph by Sommer also served as inspiration for later works of art.

In 1865, London’s publication The Argosy (today available online via Archive.org) displayed on p. 145 an anonymous drawing evidently copied from Sommer’s photograph, captioned ‘Mouth of the Harbour, Malta’. This drawing focuses on the upper part of the picture and does not show Ġnien is-Sultan.

It serves to illustrate a story by Charles W. Wood, A Day at Malta, which includes the following description: “There are few finer sights than entering Malta harbour, with its forts and fortifications, its grand sweep of water, the general disposition of the land and its accumulation of white, eastern-looking buildings. The glare from these is often especially trying, for nowhere else does the sun seem to shine with such intense force.”

A drawing captioned ‘Mouth of the Harbour, Malta’, published in The Argosy, London, 1865.

The same publication also includes a drawing modelled on a photograph by Francis Frith  on p. 141, with the Valletta ditch and the Vittoriosa creek.

Less than 10 years later, in 1874 in Leipzig − then the centre of Germany’s publication industry – the magazine Die Gartenlaube − Illustriertes Familienblatt published in full the drawing taken from Sommer’s photograph, this time captioned ‘Ansicht von La Valetta auf Malta’ (view of Valletta in Malta).

The drawing illustrates an article, a mixture of current affairs and political speculation, which discusses the possible relocation of the pope to Malta, four years after Italy’s occupation of Rome. This article, ‘Die künftige Residenz des Papstes’ (The pope’s future residence), can be read in German today, transcribed, on Wikisource.

Sommer died in 1914 and his works entered the public domain 70 years later, in 1984. Likewise, The Argosy and Die Gartenlaube have lost copyright protection 70 years after their publication. Today, they are available online and their illustrations have been uploaded over time by different users to Wikimedia Commons, the iconograph repository of Wikipedia. Volunteers have catalogued them according to author and subject.

A drawing taken from Sommer’s photograph, captioned ‘Ansicht von La Valetta auf Malta’ (View of Valletta in Malta), published in Die Gartenlaube, Leipzig, 1874.

In my work on Wikicommons on the iconographic heritage of Malta, I could thus identify this cluster of images and was able to better date each of them and highlight the travel across Europe of an early photograph of Malta.

Platforms like Wikicommons bring together, in digital form, items that are held by museums and institutions across the continent. The work of digital curation they allow is key to further explore the history of Malta and how it has been viewed across the continent in the early years of photography.

Davide Denti is a member of Wikimedia Italia and of Wikimedia Community Malta.