Paolo Tibaldi, born January 26, 1824, in Piacenza, Italy, and died January 17, 1901, in Rome, was an optical worker, soldier, carbonaro, and Italian revolutionary. This albumen CDV, circa 1870, presents a strict left-profile bust portrait consistent with judicial identification photography of the period; no photographer's imprint is visible on the mount. On June 13, 1857, Tibaldi was arrested by the French police for having allegedly planned an assassination attempt against Napoleon III, a conviction widely regarded as the product of police manipulation. He was sentenced to permanent deportation to Cayenne, where by 1866 he remained the sole political prisoner still held on the island.

The subject is shown in sharp profile against a plain pale ground, his chestnut hair swept back from a receding hairline, his full beard dense and rounded, his collar and coat lapel barely visible at the lower edge of the frame. The composition is spare and frontal in its lateral axis, capturing a pale complexion and a composed, inward expression characteristic of police record portraits.

Returning to London after his amnesty, Tibaldi responded to Léon Gambetta's call to defend Paris in September 1870, arriving at the head of a small legion of exiles and reuniting with Delescluze, Blanqui, and Flourens. At the head of his men, a formation known as the "tirailleurs de Tibaldi," he marched on the Hôtel de Ville on October 31, 1870, participating in the temporary occupation of the building in what became the first attempt to establish the Commune.

The reverse bears an inscription reading: "Tibaldi / 40 à 44 ans / taille 1 m. 70 / Cheveux Chatains / barbe Chataine, grisonnante / teint pâle" (Tibaldi / age 40 to 44 / height 1 m. 70 / chestnut hair / chestnut beard, graying / pale complexion).