Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in good condition. Pages in excellent condition. Some creasing to the back cover otherwise very good. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> OVER THE PAST twenty-five years our understanding of the achievements of photography in the nineteenth century has greatly expanded. Until quite recently we were familiar with some of the techniques used in the past and a few names were remembered but suddenly the story has sprung to life rich and complex and works admired in their day but since forgotten are now the subject of detailed study. The portraits of Virginia Verasis. Countess de Castiglione made between 1856 and 1895 by the photographer Pierre-Louis Pierson have however been spared the fate that has befallen so many works which were celebrated in their day but which now languish in obscurity. As a character the Countess has never ceased to appeal to the popular imagination and the photographs that have been published from time to time have served to perpetuate the legend of the beautiful adventuress involved in the great political schemes of her day and of the lonely old woman who wandered distractedly about the place Vend?me at night mourning the loss of her beauty. These portraits have been used to illustrate romanticized biographies of the Countess and histories (of varying accuracy) of the Second Empire and the Risorgimento la vie galante. photography and fashion. But the work as a whole known only through these exam- ples remained all but unexplored. A number of factors contributed to this neglect. In the first place because the photographs are for the most part portraits commissioned by the Countess and executed by Pierson they are the result of a collaboration which remains somewhat nebulous Pierre-Louis Pierson was not Nadar and his work cannot be separated on purely aesthetic grounds from the mass of portraits produced by the Mayer & Pierson studio Rather he was a skilled practitioner in a medium that was fast assuming an industrial scale; indeed the art of portraiture was rapidly being reduced to a formula. As a result it is difficult to attribute specifically to Pierson anything that is innovative or original. The Countess who was perceived as a disturbing character whose motives were unclear was understood to have taken up photography merely to satisfy her narcissism. Her project undermined by her shameless self absorption could not therefore be regarded as that of a true artist. For the art historian the intentions of the Countess and her photographer appear from the outset too eccen ne and too ambiguous for serious study and anyone who explores the work reales