Pope Pius IX

A hand-coloured carte-de-visite portrait of Pope Pius IX.

In 1846 Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti (1792-1878) became the 252nd man to occupy the chair of St. Peter. Initially a liberal, he never recovered from his exile of 1848 and for the rest of his life remained convinced that any political concessions to democracy merely fuelled the fires of revolution. An opponent of Italian unity, he became a virtual prisoner in the Vatican.

Photographer unidentified.