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Stage Frieze and Cornice
Louis-Emile Durandelle (French, 1839–1917)
c. 1870
- Medium
- Albumen print, from "Le nouvel Opéra de Paris, Sculpture ornementale" (1875)
- Classification
- Photograph
- Dimensions
- Image/paper: 37.9 × 28.2 cm (14 15/16 × 11 1/8 in.); Mount: 63 × 45.2 cm (24 13/16 × 17 13/16 in.)
- Culture
- France
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Photography and Media
- Credit line
- Smart Family Acquisition Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
One of the most accomplished architectural photographers in 19th-century France, Louis-Emile Durandelle is best known for his 1861–75 photographs of the construction of the Paris Opéra, an opulent structure that would come to symbolize the ambitions of Second Empire Paris. Durandelle produced some 200 images of the building and published 115, including this one, in the massive, eight-volume architectural work Le nouvel Opéra de Paris. Much of what Durandelle photographed was not visible to the unaided eye: close-up details of decorative elements, for example, or structural elements hidden inside the completed building. His images freed architects from drawing complex patterns and moldings by hand, kept clients abreast of construction progress, and formed a historical record of a huge urban undertaking.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
