Copy Print From "Celebrated Inscriptions Ancient Eugubine Tablets"
William Henry Fox Talbot (English, 1800–1877)
c. 1844
- Medium
- Salted paper print
- Classification
- Photograph
- Dimensions
- Image: 19.9 × 14.2 cm (7 7/8 × 5 5/8 in.); Paper: 22.9 × 19 cm (9 1/16 × 7 1/2 in.)
- Culture
- England
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Photography and Media
- Credit line
- Edward E. Ayer Endowment in memory of Charles L. Hutchinson
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
When William Henry Fox Talbot, one of the inventors of photography, presented his initial findings in January 1839, he proposed a variety of applications for his new discovery, which he called “photogenic drawing.” He presciently detailed how it could be used for portraits, landscape, architecture, and depictions of objects seen in the microscope—but also as a tool for copying drawings and engravings. Here Talbot—an expert in ancient languages as well as chemistry—photographically reproduced a page showing a copy of inscriptions in a native Umbrian alphabet from one of seven ancient bronze tablets discovered in Italy in the 15th century.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
