536
some having been used for engraving tests, and tests
on paper. The principal subjects photographed were,
in addition to some monuments of Paris and of the
Normandy coast, images of the Parisian roofs, or the
residence of the street of Cherche-Midi, some scientifi c
topics (Sun, reproductions of insect), but also, a number
of portraits and reproductions of objects also caught
Fizeau’s interest.
His images are today, in Paris’ Carnavalet museum,
the museum of the national Academy of arts and trades,
the national Bibliothèque nationale de France and the
photographic archives of the Patrimoine. It seems that
a part of the fi les and its collection disappeared in plun-
dering from the castle from Venteuil, which happened
during the First World War. Certain manuscripts, original
work, and letters however were given in 1935 to the fi les
of the Academy of Science by M.Ramond-Gontaud, but
no photographs were included. A part of his collection
was put on sale in London (E.P. Goldschmhet) during
the 1950s which included in particular, more than fi fty of
images signed by Fizeau himself, such as the dedicated
specimen of The Pencil of Nature, and 17 original tests
of Talbot. For about fi fteen years, several important sets
of his daguerreotypes and engraving tests were sold to
Chartres (Gallery of Chartres 3.12.89; 6.10.91; 7.3.93),
Paris (Drouot, 12.12.97; Sotheby’ S, 16.03.2002) and
London (Sotheby’ S, 27.10.99).
Quentin Bajac
Further Reading
Janet E Buerger, French Daguerreotypes, Chicago and London,
The University of Chicago Press, 1989.
Alfred Cornu, “Note on the scientifi c oeuvre of H.Fizeau,” Paris,
1898.
H.Fizeau, Scientifi c Work... Emmanuelle Figueras, “a photo
hobbyist,” Science and Life, February 1995.
Paris and the daguerreotype, cat. exposition, Paris, Carnavalet
museum, 1989.
FLACHÉRON, COUNT FRÉDÉRIC A.
(1813–1883)
French engraver and photographer
Jean François Charles André Flachéron (called Frédéric
Flachéron) was born in Lyon on 26th October 1813. His
father, Louis Flachéron, was a famous architect. On
31 st March 1836 Frédéric enrolled at the Royal School
of Fine Arts in Paris. In 1839 he won the second Great
Prize of Rome for engraving on medals and semi-pre-
cious stones, but later decided to leave for Rome. He
belonged to the French artistic circle and was especially
close to the painter Ingres. Flachéron took photographs
of Rome from 1848 to 1853 using the calotype process.
He always signed and dated his salted paper prints. In
the early 1850s at the Caffè Greco he often met other
well-known photographers such as Giacomo Caneva,
James Anderson, Eugène Constant. In 1851 at the Great
Exhibition in London he showed seven panoramic views
of Rome and won a medal. In 1852 he participated
in the photographic exhibition held at the Society of
Arts, London. He also kept in touch with an important
collector from Montpellier, Alfred Bruyas (patron of
Gustave Courbet), who was in Rome in 1846 and in- Bruyas collected many photographic views of
Rome by Flachéron, dated from 1848 to 1852. In 1866
Flachéron went to Paris with his family and he died
there on 28 June 1883.
Silvia Paoli
FLORENCE, ANTOINE HERCULES
ROMUALD (1804–1879)
Draftsman, painter, and typographer
Florence was born in Nice, France on 29 February1804
but passed his childhood in Monaco. As a young man
he worked as draftsman, painter, typographer and later
as inventor. He went to Brazil in 1824. He worked in
the trade and in printing media, before taking share
with Langsdorff, forwarding as draftsman from 1825
to 1829.
Baron von Langsdorff (1773–1853) who had the
position of consul-general of Russia in Brazil hired
him as an illustrator and topographic draftsman for an
expedition in the Amazon. Florence was on the same
boot as the German painter Johann Moritz Rugendaz
en de French illustrator Adrien Taunay.
In 1830, he married the Brazilian Maria Angélica de
Vasconcellos and settled in Vila de São Carlos, current
Campinas (near to São Paulo) where he would stay till
his death on 27 March 1879. His wife died in 1850 and
left him 13 children. Four years later he married the
German immigrant Carolina Krug with whom he had
7 children.
From 1830 on, Florence devoted himself to his nu-
merous projects of invention. During the Langsdorff
expedition, he had developed a new system of using
musical notation to record the songs of birds and vocal-
izations of other animals, which he named “zoophonia.”
In 1830, when he was searching for a simplifi ed way
of printing his more than 200 illustrations performed
during the Langsdorff Expedition, other than using
expensive and time-consuming engravings on wood
and metal (xylography and lithography). In 1830 he
invented a new process, similar to the mimeograph,
which he named “polygraphia,” and began using this
commercially in his printing offi ce. In 1832, with the
help of a pharmacist friend, Joaquim Correa de Mello,
he began to study ways of permanently fi xing camera