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[Large Figures on the North Porch, Chartres Cathedral]

1852
Not on view
Seen obliquely from the eye level of a cathedral visitor, the portal sculptures in Henri Le Secq's photograph appear disengaged from their stone support. The figures' corporeality is animated by sharp focus and by their position between shadowed columns and a blur of moving foliage. Le Secq's inspired photography of French cathedrals won critical praise and government support, because he demonstrated the new medium's capacity to provide detailed and accurate records. This photograph, made in 1852, is also an eloquent poem about the passage of time and the life of art, ideas resonant in an age that clung to Romantic notions of the fragment even as it embarked on archaeological investigation and restoration. This melding of the objective and the personal in architectural photography made Henri Le Secq a central figure in the small group of French photographers who pioneered the aesthetics of the new medium.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: [Large Figures on the North Porch, Chartres Cathedral]
  • Artist: Henri-Jean-Louis Le Secq (French, Paris 1818–1882 Paris)
  • Date: 1852
  • Medium: Salted paper print from paper negative
  • Dimensions: 32.8 x 22.1 cm (12 15/16 x 8 11/16 in.)
  • Classification: Photographs
  • Credit Line: Purchase, The Howard Gilman Foundation and Harriette and Noel Levine Gifts, Samuel J. Wagstaff Jr. Bequest, and Rogers Fund, 1990
  • Object Number: 1990.1130
  • Curatorial Department: Photographs

More Artwork

More Artwork
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Porte gauche au portail royal de Chartres
Henri-Jean-Louis Le Secq
1852
[Jamb Figures, Chartres Cathedral]
Henri-Jean-Louis Le Secq
1852
[Snow on the Champs-de-Mars, Paris]
Henri-Jean-Louis Le Secq
1852–53
Paris, cathédrale Notre-Dame, les arcs-boutants, Henri-Jean-Louis Le Secq French, Salted paper print from paper negative
Paris, cathédrale Notre-Dame, les arcs-boutants
Henri-Jean-Louis Le Secq
ca. 1851
[Dense Grove of Saplings]
Henri-Jean-Louis Le Secq
1851–53

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