A French quarter plate daguerreotype, circa 1850, of a Catholic priest, shown three-quarter length in soutane and skullcap with a small book held to his chest. The plate is presented in the French manner, under glass in a paper passe-partout, within a gilt inner frame and wide burl outer frame.

He turns to the viewer’s left, gaze averted, a high forehead beneath a dark calotte and hair curling behind the ear. A black rabat edged in white falls in two tabs over a soutane with gathered shoulders. One hand spreads across the lower edge of a small dark-bound book, pressing it to his chest, while the other arm folds beneath. The ground behind him is toned blue, and the mat opening is bordered in patterned gilt.

The black rabat with its white border was the distinctive collar of the French secular clergy in the nineteenth century, and with calotte and soutane it marks the sitter as a parish priest or abbé. The pocket-size volume suggests a breviary. French daguerreotypists favored glazed passe-partout mounts over the hinged cases used in America.