Pavilion Richelieu, Louvre, Paris (1856–57): Art, History and Details

Pavilion Richelieu, Louvre, Paris (1856–57) 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:

In 1854, Édouard Baldus and two other artists were commissioned to record construction of the New Louvre, one of the grandest of Napoleon III’s building projects. New wings joined the Louvre Palace, started in the late 1100s, to the Tuileries Palace, begun in 1564. The Pavilion Richelieu, completed shortly before this photograph was taken, originally housed governmental offices and only became part of the Louvre Museum in 1993. Berthe Morisot and her sister, Edma, were in the museum copying a painting by Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens when they first met Édouard Manet, sometime between 1865 and 1868.

Object facts

• Title: Pavilion Richelieu, Louvre, Paris
• Date: 1856–57
• Creator attribution: Édouard Baldus (French, 1813–1889)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: salted paper print, albumenized, from wet collodion negative
• Dimensions: Image: 44.5 x 34.3 cm (17 1/2 x 13 1/2 in.); Matted: 61 x 50.8 cm (24 x 20 in.)
• Collection: Photography
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 1991.160

A detail from the museum

The New Louvre, created in the 1850s, was one of the grandest of Napoleon III’s building projects.

Collection credit

Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• 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.