Angel, Sainte-Chapelle
1853-54
Medium
Salted paper print
Dimensions
33.4 × 20.7 cm (image/paper); mount: 51.5 × 40.2 cm (20 1/4 × )
Classification
photography
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
157057
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Auguste Mestral was one of five photographers hired by the French government in 1851 to document the nation's architectural heritage in photographic surveys known as the Heliographic Missions. A few years later, the sculptor Adolphe-Victor Geoffroy Dechaume commissioned him to record the angels of the Passion he had just produced for the restoration of Sainte-Chapelle, a splendid 13th-century chapel in the heart of Paris. Mestral photographed each sculpture on the ground, backed with a white she...