This remarkably well-preserved whole-plate daguerreotype by Alphonse Eugène Hubert, assistant and close associate of Louis Daguerre, was made just months after Daguerre revealed the secrets of his invention in August 1839. No doubt made outdoors in full sunlight, the arrangement of artistic bric-a-brac offered an immobile display with limited depth—desirable characteristics in the earliest days of daguerreotypy, when exposures were slow. Beyond practicality, however, such an arrangement was ideal for showing off the extraor­dinary precision of the process and for linking it to the realm of fine art, demonstrating photography’s ambitions even at its birth.