Mlle Sanlaville dans Gisèle
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
2005.100.588.1.98
Art Historical Context
In 1863, French photographer André-Adolpheugène Disdéri captured *Mlle Sanlaville Gisèle*, a striking albumen silver print portraying the ballerina in her role from the Romantic ballet *Giselle*. This photograph exemplifies the mid-19th-century craze for theatrical imagery, as stars like Mlle Sanlav became celebrities through affordable, collectible portraits. Disd, a pioneer of photography, revolutionized the medium by inventing the carte de visite format—small, card-mounted photos that flooded Europe and fueled a portraiture boom during the Second Empire. The albumen silver print, made from...
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...