Vest of Emperor Maximilian

In the 1860s collecting and exchanging cartes-de-visite-little photographs about the size of a visiting card that were often mounted in ornate albums-grew tremendously popular in Europe and the United States. This uncut sheet of cartes depicts the bullet-riddled vest of the Austrian Archduke Maximilian I, who was appointed emperor of Mexico by Napoleon III in 1864. Maximilian's puppet regime lasted only three years; when the French army withdrew from Mexico in 1867, he was captured, tried, and executed by the nationalist supporters of Benito Juarez.
François Aubert, a French photographer who was in Mexico at the time, photographed Maximilian's corpse and clothing, producing a sensational and somewhat gruesome record of the execution and the politically charged relics of the slain emperor. This image of Maximillian's disembodied vest floating in an indeterminate space was re-photographed in carte-de-visite format by the highly successful Parisian photographer Disdéri.