Giuseppe Felici, born in Cagli, reached Rome at 20 years old in 1850
in order to study violino, but he found out the photography and attended it
for all his life.
He started to take picture, like all the photographers of those
times,of Rome and the roman country, and nearly for joke he bagan to photograph \"the papal zuavi\",
than filled up of demands for portraits.
This was the large one carried out of its life, because he attracted attention
to the point to become the official photographer of all the Vaticans events.
He founded the Felici's company in the 1863, Giuseppe Felici
obtained the licence of \"Papal Photographer\" in 1901.
When he dead the job was continued from his sons Alberto and Arturo,
then from the grandsons Luigi and Rodolfo and later on still from the
greats-grandsons Alberto and Giuseppe.
Giuseppe Felici nel suo studio di Via del Babuino.
Today the Felici's archives possess an exceptional documentation of all
the papal events of beyond a century, from Pio IX to ours days,
continuing the job no in the first shop of Via del
Quirinale, near the old papal palace, and not even
in the old and historical shop of Via del Babuino, but in
less prestigious but more comfortable shop for the
pilgrims, of Via Cola di Rienzo 297.
Beyond to the life of the Vatican, the Felici's company took a photographs of
landscapes of many Italian regions and several historical events like
official visits of foreign monarchs and governors to Rome, and it had thousands of portraits: from those of the peasants who met
on sunday in piazza di Spagna, to those of \"Casa Savoia\" and of the Mussolini family.
Gli undici Papi ritratti dalla Fotografia Felici:
1846-1878 Pio IX (Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti)
1878-1903 Leone XIII (Vincenzo Gioacchino Pecci)
1903-1914 san Pio X (Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto)
1914-1922 Benedetto XV (Giacomo Della Chiesa)
1922-1939 Pio XI (Ambrogio Damiano Achille Tatti)
1939-1958 Pio XII (Eugenio Pacelli)
1958-1963 Giovanni XXIII (Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli)
1963-1978 Paolo VI (Giovanni Battista Montini)
1978 Giovanni Paolo I (Albino Luciani)
1978-2005 Giovanni Paolo II (Karol Wojtyla)
2005 Benedetto XVI (Joseph Ratzinger)
