Salt print, lightly albumenised, from a paper negative. Mounted on card.

Stamped with the artist's signature lower right beneath the image. Also stamped with the signature on the image lower right.

In 1853 Baldus travelled throughout Provence, recording the region's ancient and medieval monuments. Among his destinations was the Maison Carrée, a first-century AD Roman temple in Nthat he had photographed two years earlier on a government-sponsored project entitled La Mission Héliographique, or photographic survey. This time, he travelled with a new, larger format camera, and he honed a mature style that would bring him recognition and that would create a new standard for architectural photography.

Returning to the site, Baldus made the decision to negate perspective and situate the building in a flater pictorial space. He achieved this by shifting his vantage point so that he viewed the Maison Carrée from the side, ignoring the façade. Furthermore, he later painted directly onto the negative in order to remove the background structures, thus isolating the temple in space.

Another print of this image is in the collection of the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.