Physical description: top edge of negative is uneven; bottom corner flares
Inscription: in brown ink, verso, lower right, H.F.T. phot. 1st March 1840 [Henry Fox Talbot, 1 March 1840]; in brown ink, verso, top right, Camera Obscura; in turquoise ink, recto, lower right, R [ink is faint, probably due to immersion during reviving]
Owner:Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History
One of the objects most photographed by Talbot, this statuette seems always to have been known as the “Bust of Venus” by the Talbot family. It was often referred to as such in inscriptions made by the likes of Lady Elisabeth Feilding. It is in fact a “Bust of Susanna”, reduced from the original full-figure marble statue by the Baroque sculptor, François du Quesnoy (1597-1643). The original is in the church of Santa Maria di Loreto, in Rome.
