Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey Autoportrait 1840 daguerreotype Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey Portrait of a Woman holding a Flower 1842 daguerreotype Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey Portrait of Mme Annette Langerrois ca. 1842-44 daguerreotype Bibliothèque nationale de France |
Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey Portrait of Two Women ca. 1842-55 daguerreotype Bibliothèque nationale de France |
Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey Study of a Tree 1841 daguerreotype Bibliothèque nationale de France |
Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey Cedars of Lebanon 1844 daguerreotype Bibliothèque nationale de France |
Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey Cathédrale Notre Dame, Paris 1841 daguerreotype Bibliothèque nationale de France |
Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey At Sea, on board the ship Le Chaillé ca. 1842-43 daguerreotype Bibliothèque nationale de France |
Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey Arch of Constantine, Rome 1842 daguerreotype private collection |
Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey Reliefs at Base, Arch of Constantine, Rome 1842 daguerreotype private collection |
Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey Ponte Rotto, Rome 1842 daguerreotype Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
"When Girault photographed the Ponte Rotto, the oldest stone bridge in Rome, only two of its original five arches remained standing, and locals used it as a fishing pier. Built over the Tiber [as the Pons Aemilius] in the second century BC, it had suffered serious damage from generations of flooding. At the end of the nineteenth century one of the arches was demolished [the perpetrators of that atrocity now slowly roasting in Hell] to make room for a new bridge, leaving the single arch that survives today."
Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey Temple of Castor and Pollux, Rome 1842 daguerreotype Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey Vase, Basilica di Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, Rome 1842 daguerreotype Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey Temple of Artemis, Sardis 1843 daguerreotype Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey Greco-Roman Theater Capital, Miletus 1843 daguerreotype Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey Caryatid on the Erechtheum, Athens 1842 daguerreotype Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey Temple of Olympian Zeus, Athens 1842 daguerreotype private collection |
Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey never exhibited his pioneering daguerreotypes, nor, dying without heirs, did he make any provision for their survival. Most of the small metal plates, stored in small wooden boxes, lingered in his abandoned villa until their accidental discovery decades later by a neighboring landowner. The majority are now in public institutions, but the example directly above, dating from the artist's 1842 sojourn in Athens, made its way to auction in 2003. At that time, with the fame of Girault at last established, it commanded a hammer price of $922,488.