Ornamental Scupture (c. 1865–72): Art, History and Details

Ornamental Scupture (c. 1865–72) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Louis-Émile Durandelle (French, 1839–1917).

The work and its context

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

Napoleon III commissioned a new opera house that was adorned with lavishly decorated facades and surfaces inside and out, like this sculptural molding that topped doors in the building’s side galleries. Louis-Émile Durandelle photographed it while still in the workshop; he blacked out the background in the negative. The opera house became the setting for Gaston LeRoux’s 1910 novel The Phantom of the Opera, which inspired the 1976 musical and 2004 film.

Object facts

• Title: Ornamental Scupture
• Date: c. 1865–72
• Creator attribution: Louis-Émile Durandelle (French, 1839–1917)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: albumen print from wet collodion negative
• Dimensions: Image: 28.1 x 38.1 cm (11 1/16 x 15 in.)
• Collection: Photography
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 1990.116

A detail from the museum

Louis-Émile Durandelle photographed this sculptural ornament for the new Paris opera house while still in the workshop; he blacked out the background in the negative.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Garnier, Charles, and Louis-Émile Durandelle. Le nouvel Opéra de Paris. 1875.
• "1990 Photography Acquisitions." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 78, no. 2 (1991): 46-59.
• 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.