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ARCHITECTURE - Ruins "...voisins de l'antiquité, s'élevant sur ses débris, ces édifices ont conservé sans doute quelques traces, plus ou moins effacées de son génie et de ses traditions" Girault de Prangey Essai sur l'Architecture des Arabes et des Mores en Espagne, en Sicile et en Barbarie, Paris A. Hauser 1841, page 67. Girault de Prangey was the first artist since the invention of photography to embark on a photographic journey of such magnitude. His personal vocation as an historian of Islamic architecture provided the initial drive, but he was soon to find himself documenting the evidence of earlier civilizations. Many of these historical sites were already known widely to European viewers from paintings, drawings and prints, but had never been photographed before. No-one else had ever compiled such a collection of undeniable visual evidence showing what remained from past cultures. The political and environmental ravages of intervening years had inevitably destroyed much, and it was rare for Girault de Prangey to find complete buildings intact. Even the smaller structures such as the Tower of the Winds and the Choragic Monument in Athens, although relatively unscathed, were still only partially excavated in the early 1840s. Many of the same monuments today are seemingly more complete due to the extensive renovations and reconstructions that have occurred since the second half of the nineteenth century. The photographer picked his way through the remains to focus on what survived: the fragment which could now only hint at the scale and complexity of the whole, but which still provides us today with a direct link back to early cultures from which we have absorbed so much.

JOSEPH-PHILIBERT GIRAULT DE PRANGEY

183. Jérusalem. Piscine probatique.

細節

JOSEPH-PHILIBERT GIRAULT DE PRANGEY
183. Jérusalem. Piscine probatique.
Daguerreotype. n.d.[1844] Titled and numbered in ink on label on verso.
7 3/8 x 4¾in. (18.8 x 12cm.)

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拍品專文

This wonderfully luminous image shows the site known in the mid 19th century as the Pool of Bethesda or Probatic Pool. The name used by Girault de Prangey derives from the Greek name Probatica for the Sheep Gate, which was where the sheep market was held, supposedly nearby. The Pool is described in the Gospel according to John as a spring fed pool with mysteriously troubled waters in which invalids could be cured and where Jesus performed the miraculous cure of a crippled man. The precise site of the pool has been the subject of debate and dispute over centuries and several archaeological surveys were conducted during the late 19th and 20th centuries to establish the existence of the pool and its exact location.
The daguerreotype shows the roughly textured masonry wall with a few patches of plaster still clinging here and there, and greenery colonising the uneven top surface. The high, bright sun casts deep shadows, which accentuate the construction of the wall. At the same time they obscure the depth of the pool adding a sense of drama and mystery.

This is the only daguerreotype of this subject in the photographer's archive.