The J. Paul Getty Museum

Object Description

Scipion Sardini (1526-1609), who built this elaborate house and its appendages in 1565, was an Italian whose family moved to France in 1533 in the wake of Catherine de Medici, the Italian heiress who married King Henri II. As a tax collector and banker to royalty and the nobility, Sardini became rich, unpopular, and then very rich. His mansion was the first of many buildings to be constructed in Paris in a mixture of stone and brick, the stone being used to mark corners and surround windows and doors, and the brick as a wall surface. After Sardini's death the house was used as a hospital for the poor; then, during an outbreak of the plague, as a temporary prison; and later as the central dispensary for candles, meat, and bread for all the hospitals of Paris. It served as the place where bread for the hospitals was baked until it was sold in early 2020. Fortunately, the building’s facade will be left intact because it holds a historical monument status.

Of the several views that Eugène Atget made of this building, this one, taken from the square that borders a side of the mansion, shows the aspect of the exterior that had least changed from the time the house was constructed. The dim light of winter produced a range of gray tones on the brick and stone surfaces that is offset by the black of the foreground trees and the white of the snow that catches the sunlight.

This print, according to an inscription on the back, belonged to Maurice Utrillo, who is known for his views of Paris, particularly of Montmartre. He directly modeled a 1926 painting on the photograph altering nothing in Atget's composition except for changing the season to what seems to be spring, adding several figures, and brushing in a few spindly shrubs in the foreground.

Adapted from Eugène Atget, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum by Gordon Baldwin (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2000), 72. ©2000, J. Paul Getty Trust.