Westernmost Colossus of the Temple of Re, Abu Simbel
1850
Medium
Salted paper print from paper negative
Dimensions
Image: 9 in. × 6 1/2 in. (22.8 × 16.5 cm) Mount: 18 11/16 × 12 5/16 in. (47.5 × 31.2 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
2005.100.376.149
Tags
Art Historical Context
Step into the shadow of ancient grandeur with Maxime Du Camp's *Westernmost Colossus of Temple of Re, Abubel* (1850), a salted paper print that captures one of the colossal statues guarding Ramses II's rock-cut temple in Nubia, Egypt. Du Camp, a French writer and photographer, documented this awe-inspiring monument during his 1849–1850 with Gustave Flaubert, bringing the pharaoh's 66-foot-tall likeness—carved in the 13th century BCE—into sharp focus for 19th-century viewers. This image exemplifies early calotype photography, using a paper negative to produce a textured, soft-toned salted pape...
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...