22. Cour de la Mosquée el Ahzar, au Kaire
Medium
Lithograph
Dimensions
Sheet: 22 3/8 × 15 5/8 in. (56.9 × 39.7 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Joyce F. Menschel Photography Library Fund, 2017
Accession Number
2017.66.6
Art Historical Context
Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey’s 1843 lithograph captures the serene courtyard of Cairo’s Al-Azhar Mosque, one of the oldest centers of Islamic learning in the world. A French architect and pioneering photographer, Girault de Prangey traveled extensively through Egypt and the Near East in the early 1840s, producing some of the first photographic records of these sites before translating many into lithographs for wider audiences back in Europe. The print exemplifies the nineteenth-century fascination with Orientalist imagery while serving a documentary purpose. Rendered with delicate tona...
About the Artist
Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey · 1804–1892
Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey (1804–1892), born in Langres, France, as the sole surviving child of Claude Joseph Girault and Barbe Philiberte Rosine Piétrequin, inherited the lordships of Genevrières and Prangey, adopting his full surname in 1825. After studies at Langres college and in Paris, where he earned baccalauréats in letters (1826) and law (1828), he pursued artistic training under ...