<b>1842 * Bruxelles</b> ° 29.8.1803. Itinerant daguerreotypist and calotypist. Lecchi initially travelled in 1840 as a Diorama manager through southern France - successively to Toulouse, Nîmes and Toulon, settling in Marseille [F] in the winter of 1840-1841 and, by October 1841, was operating there as a portrait Daguerreotypist. After opening a Daguerreotype studio in Aix-en-Provence [F] in March 1842, Lecchi travelled to Paris where he applied for a patent for colouring Daguerreotype plates on 1.10.1842. Described as a "Milanese painter", Lecchi arrived in Belgium in December 1842 for the purpose of "taking copies of our finest paintings" (Le Courrier Belge, 22.12.1842). At the end of 1844 Lecchi presented samples of his paper negative process using bromine and iodine as accelerators to the "Académie des Sciences" in Paris. On his return to Marseille in 1845, he promoted his photographic process on paper. Lecchi subsequently operated as a photographer in Rome [I] from November 1848 until 1859. He recorded the aftermath of the siege of Rome by French troops in July 1849 in a series of salt paper prints. Lecchi thereafter operated a portrait studio in Valletta [Malta], at 141 Strada Stretta, 1864-1866. Lecchi was last recorded in the Rome population register in 1868-1869 and predeceased a son who died there on 28.2.1871.