On view
Spire in lead and hammered copper, Notre-Dame, Paris,
1860
As the French government resolved to honor and preserve the nation’s architectural heritage in the mid-nineteenth century, the architect Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc oversaw renovations of several Romanesque and Gothic churches. He relied on the firm Monduit et Béchet to produce metalwork, including a new spire for the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris.
Marville documented these transformations to promote Monduit et Béchet’s metalwork, creating rooftop views to show the ornamental spires in situ, as in the above photograph of Notre-Dame. When given the opportunity to stage an elegantly lit composition of the firm’s wares at London’s International Exhibition of 1862, Marville arranged a still life of figural and ornamental elements. The result looks as much like the treasury of a medieval church, where precious and holy objects were stored, as the product line of a modern foundry.
Information
1860
Europe, France, Paris, Notre Dame
The artist. Acquired by Ken and Jenny Jacobson, England, after 1859 [1]; purchased by the Princeton University Art Museum, 1994.
Notes:
[1]. Ken and Jenny Jacobson, based in Essex, England, are dealers of nineteenth century photographs. Ken Jacobson is an alumnus of Princeton University (B.A., Chemistry, before 1970).
http://www.jacobsonphoto.com/about/
- Les chefs-d'oeuvre de la photographie dans les collections de l'Ecole des beaux-arts (Paris: l'Ecole, 1991).), pp. 150–151
- "Acquisitions of the Art Museum 1994," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 54, no. 1 (1995): p. 40-79., pp. 63–64
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Peter Barberie, "Charles Marville's Seriality," in "More than One: Photographs in Sequence," special issue, Record of the Princeton University Art Museum 67 (2008): 30–45.
, p. 43, fig. 12
