Mlle Pancaldy
1850s–60s
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
2005.100.588.1.12
Art Historical Context
**Mlle Pancaldy** is a captivating albumen silver print by pioneering French photographer André-Adol-Eugène Disd, created in the 1850s–60s. This portrait, measuring 7 3/8 × 9 1/4 inches, captures the poised elegance of its subject—likely a performer or actress of the era—on a page from an album now housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Gilman Collection. Disdéri revolutionized photography with his invention of the *carte de visite*, a small, affordable portrait format that exploded in popularity during the Second Empire. Using a glass negative to produce sharp, richly toned albumen print...
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...