Who Was the First Person in History That Appeared on Video? It Might Be a Pope

The history of art is the history of its protagonists. This includes great creators—painters, sculptors, poets, musicians, and patrons—as well as muses and models. Leonardo da Vinci has fascinated historians for years. Still, it’s difficult to explore his biography without mentioning, at least briefly, Lisa del Giocondo, the woman believed to have inspired the famous Mona Lisa. The same goes for the enigmatic Elise, to whom Ludwig van Beethoven dedicated his memorable Bagatelle No. 25, or Margarita Luti, Raphael’s great muse.

Something similar happens with photography and cinema. Although their origins are more recent than painting, music, and sculpture, the historians who study them face questions just as complex and fascinating: Who was the first person to appear in a photograph? And the oldest? Whose is the first voice captured on a medium that allows us to hear it?

In terms of cinema, who is the first person ever filmed? Has technology and art managed to capture the gestures and movements of someone born in the 18th century—the same century that saw the French Revolution or the American Revolutionary War? And if so, can we see them?

The “Old” of Image and Sound

The question is compelling because photography has made it possible to see still images of people born in the 18th century. One example is Conrad Heyer, a veteran of the American Revolution born in 1749. Thanks to the daguerreotype technique, he was photographed in 1852 at more than 100 years old, leading some to claim he’s the oldest person ever photographed (though not in the first photo).

There are a few caveats to that title. Heyer’s image is fascinating, but some experts believe John Adams, a cobbler from Worcester born in 1745, deserves the title. Others point to an enslaved man named Caesar, the subject of an 1851 daguerreotype in the New-York Historical Society, who was reportedly born in New York in 1737.

The story of the first voice to ever be recorded is just as captivating.

A 10-second phonograph recording from 1860 is attributed to Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, a French inventor born in 1817. Still, perhaps the most studied voice on record is Helmuth von Moltke, a Prussian marshal who made several recordings in the late 1880s. The surprising detail? Moltke was born in 1800.

And at the dawn of cinema? Who is the first person ever filmed? The answer, again, is complicated but just as surprising. In the late 1870s, Eadweard Muybridge produced an early motion picture showing a horse and its rider galloping. Some sources identify the rider as C. Marvin, born in 1839.

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But if you dig into cinema’s earliest days, you find even older “actors.” One notable figure often cited as the earliest-born person ever captured on film is one of the 19th century’s towering personalities: Pope Leo XIII. He also holds the distinction of being the first pope on camera.

The film, shot by William Kennedy Dickson for the Biograph Company, was recorded in 1898 (though some attribute it to Vittorio Calcina and date it to 1896). While fascinating and iconic, it’s no cinematic masterpiece. It shows the pope riding in a carriage, seated in the Vatican gardens, and giving a blessing to the camera.

What is surprising isn’t what Leo XIII is doing, or even whether he was the first pontiff captured on film—but the year of his birth. Leo XIII, born Gioacchino Vincenzo Raffaele Luigi Pecci, came into the world in March 1810 in the Lazio region. That puts him just ten years shy of being an 18th-century figure.

Does that make him the oldest person ever filmed? That depends. Some say yes. Others aren’t so sure. Articles on the subject mention Rebecca Clark, supposedly born in 1804, or Mammy Lou, also from that year. But there’s an even older candidate—one who sparked far less attention in her time than Pope Leo XIII and remains more elusive: Despina.

You’d be forgiven for not recognizing her name. Despina was an elderly woman from the Balkans who spent her time spinning wool alongside her daughters. In 1905, she was featured in a short film lasting just a few seconds.

The crucial detail is again her birthdate: Despina was said to be 114 years old at the time, placing her birth around 1791.

So how did an elderly woman from Avdella—then part of the Ottoman Empire—end up captured on film while spinning wool and becoming a key figure in cinema history? Simple: She was the grandmother of Yanaki and Milton Manaki, pioneers of Balkan cinema and creators of the film The Weavers.

The history of art is also the history of its creators and its circumstantial protagonists—among them farmers, war veterans, shoemakers, century-old spinners, and even a 19th-century pope.

Image | Nineteenth century videos

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