[PHOTOGRAPHIE] Portrait photographique de Napoléon III

Original albumen photograph of Napoleon III, in carte-de-visite format, mounted on cardboard.
The photograph bears Disderi's name at the bottom. Phot. On the reverse: Disderi, photographer to the Emperor. Boulevard des Capucines.
Rare photograph, among the very first of the Emperor, showing a mocking and playful Napoleon III smoothing his mustache, seated on a large damask armchair in a deliberate and studied posture. There exist slightly different versions of this sitting, as Disdéri had not only invented the carte-de-visite format process (he filed the patent for carte-de-visite photography in 1854) but had also developed a device that allowed taking several photographs simultaneously and thus capturing several poses in the same session. The biographical legend of the Emperor tells that in 1859, the Emperor, then 51 years old, stopped at Disdéri's shop while departing for his Italian campaign. Following this sitting and the release of the Emperor's photographs, carte-de-visite photography swept through Paris, and all studios began practicing this technique, since this is one of the first photographs in carte-de-visite format.