Édouard Baldus
Cathédrale d'Amiens, Portail principal

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Artist Édouard BaldusFrench, born Prussia, 1813–1889

CultureFrench

Titles

Cathédrale d'Amiens, Portail principal

Date1855

PlaceAmiens, France

MediumSalted paper print from paper negative

DimensionsImage: 17 3/8 × 13 3/8 in. (44.2 × 34 cm)
Sheet: 17 3/8 × 13 3/8 in. (44.2 × 34 cm)
Mount: 24 × 17 15/16 in. (61 × 45.5 cm)

Credit LineGift of Manfred Heiting, The Manfred Heiting Collection

Object number2004.251

Not on view

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Department

Photography

Special Collections

Manfred Heiting Collection of Photography

Object Type

PHOTOGRAPHS

DescriptionIn France, the mid-19th century was a time of renewed interest in the nation’s medieval past—in literature (Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame was published in 1831), music, and especially architecture. It was also a time when artists of the first rank took up the new and still handcrafted medium of photography and made pictures of great ambition and beauty for an aristocratic clientele. Baldus was one of five photographers commissioned by the French government in 1851 to carry out photographic surveys of the nation’s architectural patrimony to aid in preservation and restoration decisions. In the years that followed, he established himself as the country’s preeminent architectural photographer, continuing to sell views of historic monuments to the government, captains of industry, and collectors of the new art. At the Gothic cathedral at Amiens, 75 miles north of Paris, he photographed the elaborately carved main portal emerging from the shadows and the restorer’s scaffolding. Fulfilling his dual goals of documentation and artistry, Baldus clearly recorded the portal’s treasure trove of early 13th-century sculpture even as he bathed the whole in an atmosphere of 19th-century Romanticism.
ProvenanceBought by Manfred Heiting from Galerie Michèle Chomette, Paris, on 1/30/1988.
Exhibition History"The Photographs of Edouard Baldus", Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1994.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks

Recto, lower left corner of image: "Amiens"
Center bottom of image: "No 42"
Marked in ink, lower right corner of mount: "Cathedrale d'Amiens. Portail principal"
Lower left corner of mount: "X"
Partial raised stamp, lower right corner of mount
Marked in pencil, verso, upper left corner: " [illegible mark, circled] "

Recto, lower right: "E. Baldus"

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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