Apr 13, 2023 - Sale 2633
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Sale 2633 - Lot 242

Price Realized: $ 2,125
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,500 - $ 3,500
(MEXICO.) [Désiré Charnay, photographer.] Group of 3 photographs of Mayan and Zapotec ruins. Albumen prints, each about 10 1/2 x 16 inches; unmounted, uncaptioned; minimal wear and foxing. Mexico, circa 1857-1861
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The French archaeologist Claude-Joseph Désiré Charnay (1828-1915) first visited Mexico from 1857 to 1861, and took the first photographs of many of its great pre-Columbian sites. These three photographs are not captioned, but they have been located among the illustrations in the 1863 book "Cites et Ruines Americaines, Mitla, Palenque, Izmal, Chichen-Itza, Uxmal" where they were published with captions: "Grand Palais, à Mitla, grande salle"; "Quatrieme Palais, à Mitla, façade occidentale"; and "Palais Des Nonnes, à Uxmal; cote sud." The first two show the ruins at Mitla, a Zapotec site in Oaxaca; the third (with vegetation growing atop the ruins) shows Uxmal, a Mayan site in Yucatán.