Marie Petipa dans le Diable à quatre
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
2005.100.588.1.33
Art Historical Context
In 1861, French photographer André-Adolpheugène Disdéri *Marie Petipa dans le Diable à quatre a striking albumen silver print portraying the ballerina Marie Petipa in a dynamic pose from the popular ballet *Le Diable à quatre (The Devil to Pay). This work, part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Gilman Collection, freezes a moment from the Paris Opéra's repertoire—a whimsical 1845 ballet-pantomime by composer Adolphe Adam—showcasing Petipa's grace amid the era's fascination with dance as high entertainment. Disdéri, a pioneer of commercial photography, perfected the carte de visite format in...
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...