Tombeau du Sultan El-Goury, au Kaire
December 1849–January 1850
Medium
Salted paper print from paper negative
Dimensions
Image: 6 9/16 × 8 11/16 in. (16.6 × 22 cm) Mount: 12 5/16 × 18 11/16 in. (31.2 × 47.5 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
2005.100.376.14
Tags
Art Historical Context
Step into the sunlit grandeur of 19th-century Cairo with Maxime Du Camp's *Tombeau du Sultan El-Goury, au Kaire*, a salted paper print captured between December 1849 and January 1850. This poignant photograph depicts the ornate tomb of Sultan Al-Ghuri, a Mamluk ruler whose funerary complex exemplifies intricate Islamic architecture with its carved stone facades, domes, and arabesque details. Du Camp, a French writer and pioneering photographer, documented this site during his transformative journey through Egypt alongside Gustave Flaubert, bringing distant wonders to European eyes. Printed fr...
About the Artist
Maxime Du Camp · 1822–present
Maxime Du Camp (1822–1894) was a pioneering French photographer and writer whose adventurous spirit and technical innovation bridged literature and visual art during the mid-19th century. Born in Paris on February 8, 1822, to a prosperous family—his father a successful surgeon—Du Camp received a solid bourgeois education at the Collège Bourbon (now Lycée Condorcet), where he cultivated interests i...