Tempio della Pace
1848–52
Medium
Albumen print from glass negative
Dimensions
Image: 8 11/16 × 11 5/16 in. (22 × 28.7 cm) Sheet: 12 1/8 × 18 1/2 in. (30.8 × 47 cm)
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gilman Collection, Museum Purchase, 2005
Accession Number
2005.100.799 (25)
Tags
Art Historical Context
In the mid-19th century, as photography emerged as a revolutionary medium, French photographer Eugène Constant captured the timeless beauty of Rome's ancient ruins. His *Tempio della Pace* (1848–52), an albumen print from a glass negative, depicts the evocative arches and weathered stone of the Temple of Peace, a grand Roman basilica built by Emperor Vespasian in the 1st century CE to celebrate victory and house imperial treasures. Constant, active in Rome during this era, specialized in architectural views, offering viewers a precise, documentary glimpse into antiquity just as Romantic intere...
About the Artist
Eugène Constant · 1848–1855
Eugène Constant (before 1820 – after 1860) was a French painter who became one of the pioneering photographers of the 19th century, capturing the grandeur of Italy's ancient monuments with unprecedented clarity.) Trained as a painter in Paris during the early 1840s, where he maintained a studio at 31 rue du Marché-Saint-Honoré, Constant exhibited interior views of Venice's Basilica of San Marco an...