Portico with Caryatids of Delphi combines photographic images with drawing and handwritten text and relates directly to Francesca Woodman’s Temple Project. This project consisted of a series of large-scale studies of draped models, referencing caryatid figures in classical architecture, and was first exhibited in 1980 at The Alternative Museum in New York City. While Woodman’s images in that exhibition were monumental in scale, the smaller, more intimate work offered here presents insight into her creative process.

This work was made with the diazotype technique, a positive-to-positive imaging process used primarily by engineers and architects. Woodman adapted this industrial process to her own artistic purposes. Drawing and writing on transparent paper, on which she also placed photographic transparencies, she created a template which was contact-printed onto diazotype paper and developed with ammonia vapor. The diazotype gave Woodman a great deal of latitude in the size of her prints, and she used it to create composite images such as the one offered here, as well as the life-sized images she made for the exhibition.

The print offered was sent by Woodman to Daniel Wolf, the first gallerist to show her work in New York City.