890
stamp “Photographe des Beaux-Arts—Marconi—Place
Gd Sablon 19—Bruxelles” on the back, as well as two
standing portraits of the model, together with other
photographs by Marconi with extensive cuts and pencil
marks, testifying to the instrumental use of these images
by Rodin and the collaborators of his atelier.
As far back as 1870, works by Marconi belonged to
the collection of images coming from the legal deposit of
the École des beaux-arts conserved at the Bibliothèque
Nationale de France in Paris as well as in numerous
private collections. His works often appear in catalogues
of the galleries that deal in artistic photographs of the
19th century.
Claudia Cavatorta
Biography
Gaudenzio Marconi was born on March 12, 1842,
in Comologne, in French-speaking Switzerland, to a
family of probable Italian origin. He married Adrienne
Fontaine, born in Amsterdam in 1844. As of 1862,
Marconi, known as an “artist-painter” before becoming
a photographer, worked in Paris, with studio at 11 rue
de Buci. He specialized in photographs of nudes, which
were mainly destined to art schools for teaching anatomy
and morphology. As of 1869, in fact, he is registered as
“photographe des beaux-arts,” and from 1871 his studio
trademark carried the title “Photographe de l’École
des beaux-arts de Paris.” In 1871, Marconi produced a
number of scenes of episodes from the siege of Paris,
and left France to move to Brussels. Initially he opened
a studio in place du Grand-Sablon, and subsequently (as
of September 22, 1876), in rue du Commerce. In 1877
he documented the sculpture L’Âge d’airain by Rodin.
On July 23, 1879, he moved to Schaerbeck, on the out-
skirts of Brussels. Records show that he remained there
until 1885, in rue Potter 5, working as both a painter
and photographer.
Further Reading
Aubernas, Sylvie et al., L’Art du nu au XIXe siècle. Le photo-
graphe et son modèle [Nude Art in the 19th century. The
Photographer and His Model], Paris: Hazan-Bibliothèque
Nationale de France, 1997 (exhibition catalogue).
Billeter, Erika, Malerei und Fotografi e im Dialog [Painting and
Photography in Dialog], Berne: Benteli, 1979.
de Decker Heftler, Sylviane, “Le nu photographique. Art impure,
art réaliste” [“The Photographic Nude. Impure Art, Realistic
Art”], in Photographie 6 (1984): 51–75.
de Decker Heftler, Sylviane, “Suite Marconi 1. La piste belge”
[‘‘Marconi Suite 1. The Belgian Track’’], in Photographie 7
(1985) 110–112.
de Decker Heftler, Sylviane, “Suite Marconi 2. Voyage en Autri-
che: Richer et le Dr Straz” [«Marconi Suite 2. Travels in Aus-
tria: Richer and Dr. Straz”], in Photographie 7 (1985): 112.
Scharf, Aaron, Art and Photography, London: The Penguin
Press, 1968.
MAREY, ETIENNE-JULES (1830–1904)
French scientist
Etienne-Jules Marey was a scientist—what we would
nowadays call a biophysicist—who used a camera in
his life-long investigation of the physiological laws
governing human and animal movement. His methods
and images were remarkably infl uential in the histories
of photography, art, aviation, military reform, mov-
ing pictures, physical education, and scientifi c labour
management.
Marey was born 5 March 1830 in Beaune, capital
city of wine-producing Burgundy in France. Follow-
ing his father’s wishes, he enrolled in Paris’ Faculty of
Medicine in 1849. He was drawn to the new science of
physiology—the study of life processes—as a student,
and after successfully passing his medical exams, he
abandoned the life of a doctor for that of a physiologi-
cal researcher.
Conceiving of the body as an animate machine run
by a complex motor whose functions could be reduced
to the newly discovered laws of thermodynamics—this
was a radical concept in his day—Marey chose to study
the body’s most manifest form of energy: movement.
He invented the graphic method, graphing instruments
that traced the body’s internal and external movements
without interference by the practitioner. These are the
mechanical ancestors of the electronic graphs and scopes
universally used in medicine today.
The December 1878 publication of Eadweard
Muybridge’s series photographs of horses in the French
journal La Nature showed Marey that photography could
enhance the graphic method. In the winter of 1881–82
after meeting Muybridge in Paris, Marey made his fi rst
photographing instrument, a small rifl e (“fusil pho-
tographique”) that took twelve sequential images per
second on a rotating glass disk. It was based on Jules
Janssen’s 1874 photographic revolver but was a notable
advance, being portable, faster, and incorporating an
automatic glass plate dispenser.
By summer 1882, Marey had moved his experiments
to the Station Physiologique, the fi rst large outdoor
municipally-funded physiological laboratory in Eu-
rope built for him in the Bois de Boulogne. There he
was aided by his talented assistant Georges Demenÿ
and his mechanic Otto Lund. Marey spent each winter
working on his photographic experiments at his villa
in Posillipo, Naples, leaving Demenÿ in charge of the
Station. This arrangement lasted until Demenÿ’s 1894
departure in a disagreement over his commercialization
of motion pictures.
Marey’s photographic method, which he called
chronophotography, was built upon his need to have
what his graphing machines had provided: the visible
expression of a continuous passage of time over equi-