Monsigny [Pierre-Alexandre]

av Physionotrace by. Quenedey

Grafik, karta.

Se vend chez Quenedy rue neuve des Petits Champs no. 15 á Paris. Dep.à la Bib. Imp. 1809. Plate mark 25 x 19 cm. The whole sheet 34 x 25 cm. Aquatint. A tear in the lower margin and just into the text, not affecting the image. A few short tears and some minor creases to the margins. Traces of ink residue to the margins and image. A portrait of Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny (1729 - 1817), a french opera composer. The remarkable thing about this portrait is that it was executed in the rare physionotrace technique, and that it is big. Most physionotraces are quite small. The technique was invented in the mid 1780s. by the frenchman Gilles-Louis Chrétien (1745 - 1811). The present one was executed by Cretiéns partner and competitor Edme Quenedey (1756 - 1830). A physionotrace was executed by a mechanical device capturing a profile in a very detailed way. The physionotrace is regarded as an important stepping stone toward the development of photography. No machine is preserved to this day, just a sketch in the Bibliotheque National in Paris. Its history is brief from its invention in the 1780s to its disappearance in the early 19th. century. Accordingly, physionotrace images are very rare today. Few countries outside France produced these kind of images, Germany and the United States being two of them.