This photograph taken by the Italian photographer Beniamino Facchinelli (1839–1895) shows an exterior view of a house in Cairo that was spared demolition in the late 19th century. Above the mashrabiyya, there is a row of stucco and glass windows, the central one of which is broken (see also IG_477).
Mounted albumen print.
The French photographer Félix Bonfils (1831–1885) captured a similar view of this building in his photograph (IG_477). The building shown is the ‘House of Sadat’ in Cairo, which became a popular subject for paintings in the 19th century. The British painter Frank Dillon (1832–1908), for example, depicted the interior of the house in several watercolours (IG_100, IG_101) and a pencil drawing (IG_105).
Volait, M. (2021). Antique Dealing and Creative Reuse in Cairo and Damascus 1850–1890. Leiden: Brill.