Nouvel Opéra, Modèles de Sculpture
Louis-Emile Durandelle French
Charles Marville French
Not on view
During construction of the sumptuous Beaux-Arts Paris Opéra, designed by Charles Garnier, Durandelle made hundreds of photographs of details of the elaborately carved and painted decorations and of the edifice overall. Most revolutionary for their time, however, and most striking to modern eyes are his photographs of the building's structural skeleton and of the construction site's mammoth network of scaffolding. Such images reveal the dual nature of the Paris Opéra-below the traditional, if ornate, masonry there lies a modern industrial armature of iron.
