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Ornamental Scupture
About the Artwork
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.
Inscriptions
none
Provenance
(Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, CA) March 27, 1991: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Exhibition history
France in the Time of Manet and Morisot. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (May 10-August 23, 2026).
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Louis-Émile Durandelle (French, 1839–1917)
- Date
- c. 1865–72
- Medium
- albumen print from wet collodion negative
- Dimensions
- Image: 28.1 x 38.1 cm (11 1/16 x 15 in.)
- Type
- Photograph
- Classification
- Photograph
- Department
- Photography
- Credit line
- John L. Severance Fund
- Accession no.
- 1990.116
More by Louis-Émile Durandelle in museum collections
Interior Details and Candelabra, Théâtre du Vaudeville, Paris
Louis-Émile Durandelle1869, printed 1875/76 · Photograph
Masks from the Control Room (Masques du vestibule de contrôle)
Louis-Émile Durandellec. 1870 · Photograph
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 7, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Open-access museum record · AT-00000375
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