The Garibaldi Panorama Project

I looked at the Garibaldi Panorama digitization project completed by Brown University. Panoramas were a popular form of entertainment in the 1800's. Audiences would assemble at circular panorama houses to view stories and scenes from around the world. This particular panorama depicts the life of Giuseepe Garibaldi who was instrumental in the unification of Italy. This panorama was made for Robert Burford and shown at his Rotunda in London. It was completed in 1859 and is the only surviving panorama by Burford. It measures 4 1/2 feet (height) by 273 feet (width). The panorama is painted both sides with watercolors.

1. Collection Principles: While the panorama is the main focal point of this collection, it is accompanied by approximately 400 images from 19th century illustrated newspapers. These images focus either on Garibaldi himself or important moments in Italy's struggle for unification. These prints came from the private collection of Dr. David Kertzer as well as the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection which is housed at Brown University. The collection was compiled to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Garibaldi's birth in 2007.

2. Object Characteristics: The panorama is viewable either as a continuous image or as individual images each depicting a scene from Garibaldi's life. To capture the entire panorama, it was unrolled six feet at a time and photographed. These photographs were then melded together to produce an animation of the entire work. While viewing the entire panorama, it is possible to click the image currently displayed to see the image as a still. This view allows users to zoom in on a particular image. While the project is still using a prototype, the finished form will include the narration of the Garibaldi's life story that originally accompanied the panorama. This narration will be available in both English and Italian.

Details on the technical production of the project from the Digitization Overview website:
"Using a vertically mounted Better Light 4" x 5" digital scan back, capturing both sides of the panorama took three days and resulted in 91 digital image files, each file ~244 MB and representing ~6.5' of horizontal width (including on average .5-1' of overlap, in order to facilitate subsequent image merging). The scan back captured 300 dpi RGB TIF files; given the height of the device this resulted in an effective real-world resolution of ~137 dpi at the actual size of the panorama.

Because scenes within the panorama���s visual narrative do not correspond to the uniform width used in the capture process, sets of capture files were digitally merged together five at a time, at full capture resolution within Photoshop CS3/v10, and then individual scenes were isolated and saved from these roughly 30-feet merged sections. A continuous image of each side of the panorama was produced by subsequently merging sequences of these five-section composites at a reduced resolution."

3. Metadata: Each still image whether from the illustrated newspapers or the panorama includes the title and a description of the image. These descriptions consist of a physical description, an abstract of what the image is depicting, general notes which indicate where the image came from and the genre or format of the original. Images from the panorama also include the name of the creator and the series. The records for the illustrated newspaper prints contain publication and creation information as well as subject headings. All materials from Brown University's collections are listed with their call number and location.

4. Intended Audience: The project was completed by the Italian Studies department in conjunction with the university library suggesting that Italian Studies students and scholars will benefit from the historical representations of Garibaldi's life. This project also appeals to many disciplines outside of Italian Studies including art history, European history, motion picture history, and cultural studies. In general, though I think that since the panorama is such a unique object, it appeals to the general public as well.