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Franck (French)
Colonne Vendôme
1871
Albumen silver print, from glass negative
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1953, Accession Number: 53.704.8
LL/111358
Curatorial description (Accessed: 11 June 2021)
On May 16, 1871, a group of Communards led by the painter Gustave Courbet pulled down the Vendôme Column. In Franck's photograph its shattered remains litter the Place Vendôme.
Modeled on the ancient Column of Trajan in Rome, the Vendôme Column was built by Napoleon I in the first decade of the nineteenth century as a glorification of the victorious French soldiers who defeated the Russian-Austrian alliance at the Battle of Austerlitz; the seventy-six battle-scene bas-reliefs that spiral up the shaft were cast from the bronze of 250 captured Russian cannons. Louis-Philippe crowned the column with a statue of Napoleon in 1833, and Napoleon III replaced it thirty years later with another of Napoleon in Roman costume.
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