Amiens (1855): Art, History and Details

Amiens (1855) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Édouard Baldus (French, 1813–1889).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This rare, majestic, and sweeping view of the cathedral of Amiens, France, is an outstanding example of Baldus’s genius for photographing architecture. Placing his large view camera at an elevated vantage point, he recorded the dominating and central position of the church, which was undergoing restoration, as it towered above the surrounding village; open landscape is captured in the distance. In this ambitious composition, he carefully rendered the scene’s textural detail, spatial complexity, and subtlety of light. Compare this distant view with the close-up detail of a stone sculpture in LeSecq’s photograph of the same building (CMA 1996.253).

Object facts

• Title: Amiens
• Date: 1855
• Creator attribution: Édouard Baldus (French, 1813–1889)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: albumen print from wet collodion negative
• Dimensions: Matted: 50.8 x 61 cm (20 x 24 in.)
• Collection: Photography
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 1986.15

Collection credit

Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1986.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 74, no. 2 (February 1987): 38–79.
• Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E Hinson. Catalogue of Photography. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1996.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.