Bas-relief of enamelled flying angel

The relief portrays a winged angel rendered in low relief, its surface highlighted by enamel work that gives a glossy, colored finish. As a devotional or decorative motif, the angel reflects the 19th‑century taste for ornamental religious imagery within private collections.

Laffon employed the wet‑collodion process, the dominant photographic method of the 1860s, to produce a sharp, detailed image of the metalwork. The photograph’s clear tonal range emphasizes the texture of the bas‑relief and the reflective quality of the enamel.

The photograph was part of a series Laffon created for the Campana Collection. In 1864 the Victoria and Albert Museum acquired 500 of these images through the agent Monsieur E. Cappe, adding them to its nascent photographic collection.

The V&A, then the South Kensington Museum, was the first institution to collect photographs (1852) and to exhibit them (1858). Founder Henry Cole promoted photography as a teaching aid for artists and students, encouraging the acquisition of works like Laffon’s to supplement traditional reprographic media.

Laffon’s contribution illustrates the early involvement of women photographers in museum documentation. Her images helped establish photography as a scholarly resource, a role that the V&A continues to recognize in its extensive photographic archives.