The Panthéon

1924

Medium

Gelatin silver chloride printing-out paper print

Dimensions

17.8 × 22.6 cm

Status

In Museum Collection

Collect24 Art ID

C24-234942

> Eugène Atget is usually thought of as depicting ordinary streets and buildings that preserved modest aspects of Paris's past, but he also made views of the city's great public monuments. Nearly all of these images are of structures built by the Bourbon monarchy, which was overthrown by the French Revolution. One of the principal and final glories of royal patronage is the Panthéon, the Late Baroque masterpiece by the architect Jacques-Germain Soufflot (1713-1780). Intended by Louis XV to be dedicated to the patron saint of Paris, Geneviève, this cruciform, domed church was constructed between 1755 and 1792 on the top of the hill on the Left Bank named after the saint. It acquired its present name and function during the Revolution, when it was converted into a mausoleum for the remains of great Frenchmen. Among those interred in its somber splendor are Voltaire (1694-1778), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), Jean-Paul Marat (1743-1793), Victor Hugo (1802-1885), and Émile Zola (1840-1902). > > Atget made his atmospheric study by photographing diagonally across the place Sainte- Geneviève toward the north side of the Panthéon, with its powerful colonnaded dome. Because the negati…