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Dimensions: measurements note 17¼ by 13¼ in. (43.8 by 33.7 cm.)

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Provenance: The photographer to Léon BourquelotBy descent to the Bourquelot familySerge Clin, VersaillesThackrey & Robertson, San FranciscoAcquired by the Quillan Company from the above, 1989

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Literature: This print:Jill Quasha, The Quillan Collection of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Photographs (New York, 1991), pl. 28 Malcolm Daniel, The Photographs of Édouard Baldus (The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, 1994, in conjunction with the exhibition), pl. 31Another print of this image:Francis Dimond and Roger Taylor, Crown & Camera: The Royal Family and Photography, 1842-1910 (London, 1987), p. 123, #58

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Notes: This remarkably well-preserved salt print was originally in the collection of Léon Bourquelot, an official in the Office of the Architect of the Louvre in the 1850s. Baldus was commissioned by the Office to document the construction of the New Louvre, and Bourquelot was responsible for assembling the resultant photographs into presentation albums for Emperor Napoléon III. During the time the two worked together, Bourquelot acquired for himself a large group of Baldus's photographs from a number of the photographer's series. Bourquelot's collection, including the print offered here, was discovered by his descendants in the late 1980s (Daniel, p. 223). Baldus photographed the massive gothic Cathédrale Notre-Dame d'Amiens in 1855. The photograph offered here is of the cathedral's main portal, with its elaborately carved tympanum showing Christ in Majesty on Judgement Day. As evidenced by the scaffolding to the left of the portal, Baldus took this image while the cathedral was undergoing restoration. As of this writing, Baldus authority Malcolm Daniel locates two other prints of this image: one in the collection of the New York Public Library, and the other in an album presented to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1855, held in the Royal Collection, England.