ÉDOUARD BALDUS (FRENCH 1813–1889)

A pair of albumen prints, depicting Michelangelo’s ‘The Dying Slave’ and ‘The Rebellious Slave’, stamp-signed, mounted onto card, some spotting and staining in margins, image 39.5 x 20.5 cm, 1854-56 (2)

*** “Also in 1855, Baldus began photographing on the work site of the New Louvre, documenting for architect Hector Lefuel every piece of statuary and ornamentation made for the vast complex linking the Louvre and Tuileries palaces. As individual records, these photographs served a practical function on the bustling work site, keeping track of the hundreds of plaster models and carved stones sculpted for the project; but as a collected whole, they formed a new means of comprehending and communicating a complex subject, bit by bit, to be reconstituted by the mind. Only photography—precise, omnivorous, prolific, and rapid—and then only in the hands of an artist both sensitive and rigorous—could produce an archive as a new form of art.”

Daniel, Malcolm. “Édouard Baldus (1813–1889).” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000.