In the
1850s, France saw both dramatic leaps in technology—photography and the
railroad among them—and a resurgence of interest in the nation’s medieval past.
The Bisson brothers were among the first generation of paper-print
photographers who brought large and beautifully rendered images of the
country’s architectural patrimony to architects, historians, and armchair
travelers back in Paris and elsewhere. Here, they recorded the 13th-century Gothic
cloister at the Abbey Church of Saint Pierre at Moissac in southwestern France,
now a UNESCO World Heritage Site prized for its elegant colonnade incorporating
the carved capitals of its 12th-century predecessor. At the time, the Bissons’
photograph would have had special poignancy: only a year earlier, in 1856, the
adjacent medieval rectory had been demolished to make way for a railroad line,
a fate that the cloister itself only narrowly escaped.