sconosciuto - Le Nu Artistique

This is an image of an artistic nude of a woman, printed in phototype (phototypie), dated between 1902 and 1907, and part of the work "Le nu estetique", produced by the painter, photographer and illustrator and published by E. Bernard & Cie.
This work, sold with monthly publication, was therefore a beautiful, today famous, collection of high-quality artistic nudes, with professional models, and the phototypes that comprise it are today highly sought after by collectors.
Phototypie, sometimes also called Collotypie, presents the images as if printed on photographic paper, without any halftone, with very deep blacks; the color is a middle ground between albumen print and carbon print, with a strong intense sepia color, warm tones, brownish/seppia hues and an extremely smooth transition in the skin tones, which perfectly imitates nineteenth-century chemical photography.
This was a very long and costly manual process, which was later abandoned in favor of lighter and easier printing processes, but certainly less impactful and artistic.
This plate, on cardboard, measures about 32x25 cm; the aesthetic condition is more than good, with very slight yellowing of the light-colored frame around the image itself.