Elise Piron
Medium
Albumen silver print from glass negative
Dimensions
Image: 7 3/8 × 9 1/4 in. (18.8 × 23.5 cm) Album page: 10 3/8 × 13 3/4 in. (26.3 × 35 cm)
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gilman Collection, Gift of The Howard Gilman Foundation, 2005
Accession Number
2005.100.588.1.59
Art Historical Context
Step into the elegant world of 19th-century photography with *Elise Piron*, a captivating portrait by André-Adolphe-Eène Disdéri from1865. Disdéri, a pioneering photographer, revolutionized the medium by inventing the carte de visite—a, affordable calling-card-sized photograph that sparked a portraiture boom across Europe and America during the Second Empire. Though this larger albumen silver print (7 3/8 × 9 1/4 in.) exceeds that format, it exemplifies his mastery in capturing the poised sophistication of his subjects, likely the titular Elise Piron, amid Paris's thriving cultural scene. Cra...
About the Artist
André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri · 1819–1889
**André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri** (1819–1889) was a pioneering French photographer whose innovations transformed portraiture into a mass medium during the Second Empire. Born on March 28, 1819, in Paris, Disdéri pursued diverse careers in commerce, acting, and politics early on, while studying art amid personal hardships following his father's death, which compelled him to support his mother, sibli...