The Goat Keeper

The first black and white photographs portraying pastoralists and their animals, are dated around the middle/end of the 19th century. Of particular interest is one image found in the Alinari archive; this shows a group of eleven goats in the Forum Traiano (Rome). Most of them are longhaired black goats with flat divergent horns and erected ears, often with a horizontal posture. Amongst them is found a goat with a lighter coat colour and two specimens with white facial lines (completely similar to the typology that local pastoralists currently define as capestrina). At least one of them appears to have curved backwards horns.