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Ornamental Scupture
Louis-Émile Durandelle (French, 1839–1917)
publisher Ducher et Cie., Editeurs
c. 1865–72
- Medium
- albumen print from wet collodion negative
- Classification
- Photograph
- Dimensions
- Image: 28.1 x 38.1 cm (11 1/16 x 15 in.)
- Culture
- France, 19th century
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Photography
- Credit line
- John L. Severance Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Kids profiles and older: it shows nature, places, still life or a children's book. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
Napoleon III commissioned a new opera house that was adorned with lavishly decorated facades and surfaces inside and out, like this sculptural molding that topped doors in the building’s side galleries. Louis-Émile Durandelle photographed it while still in the workshop; he blacked out the background in the negative. The opera house became the setting for Gaston LeRoux’s 1910 novel The Phantom of the Opera, which inspired the 1976 musical and 2004 film.
