Marie-Gabriel-Florent-Auguste de Choiseul-Gouffier
Encyclopedia
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
- 20 June 1817, Aix-la-Chapelle) was a member of the Académie Française
Académie française
L'Académie française , also called the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution,...
and the Choiseul-Gouffier
Choiseul (surname)
Choiseul is an illustrious family from Champagne, France, descendents of the comtes of Langres. The family's head was Renaud III de Choiseul, comte de Langres and sire de Choiseul, who in 1182 married Alix de Dreux, daughter of Louis VI of France. It has formed into the Langres, Clémont,...
family, French ambassador to the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
from 1784 until the fall of the French monarchy and a scholar of ancient Greece
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
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Life
Right from his studies at the collège d'HarcourtLycée Saint-Louis
The lycée Saint-Louis is a higher education establishment located in the VIe arrondissement of Paris, in the Latin Quarter. It is the only public French lycée exclusively dedicated to classes préparatoires aux grandes écoles...
, he had a passion for antiquities. He was particularly marked by frequent meetings with Jean-Jacques Barthélemy
Jean-Jacques Barthélemy
Jean-Jacques Barthélemy was a French writer and numismatist.-Early life:Barthélemy was born at Cassis, in Provence, and began his classical studies at the College of Oratory in Marseilles. He took up philosophy and theology at the Jesuits' college, and finally attended the seminary of the Lazarists...
, author of Voyage d'Anarcharsis, who he met at the home of his cousin the duc de Choiseul
Claude Antoine Gabriel, duc de Choiseul-Stainville
Claude Antoine Gabriel, duc de Choiseul-Stainville was a French soldier and émigré Royalist.-Biography:...
. Another friend was Talleyrand, with whom he participated in court intrigues and by whom he was dissuaded from taking up the religious life.
In 1776, he left for Greece on board the frigate Atalante, commanded by Joseph Bernard de Chabert
Joseph Bernard de Chabert
Joseph Bernard, marquis de Chabert was a French sailor, geographer and astronomer.He marked himself out as a chef d'escadre during French involvement in the American War of Independence and was promoted to vice admiral in 1792...
, marquis of Chabert, who was interested in astronomy. With painters and architects in tow, Choiseul-Gouffier thus visited the south Peloponnese
Peloponnese
The Peloponnese, Peloponnesos or Peloponnesus , is a large peninsula , located in a region of southern Greece, forming the part of the country south of the Gulf of Corinth...
, the Cyclades
Cyclades
The Cyclades is a Greek island group in the Aegean Sea, south-east of the mainland of Greece; and a former administrative prefecture of Greece. They are one of the island groups which constitute the Aegean archipelago. The name refers to the islands around the sacred island of Delos...
and other Aegean
Aegean Sea
The Aegean Sea[p] is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea located between the southern Balkan and Anatolian peninsulas, i.e., between the mainlands of Greece and Turkey. In the north, it is connected to the Marmara Sea and Black Sea by the Dardanelles and Bosporus...
islands, then moved on to Asia Minor
Asia Minor
Asia Minor is a geographical location at the westernmost protrusion of Asia, also called Anatolia, and corresponds to the western two thirds of the Asian part of Turkey...
. The journey had also had a political goal - explaining the situation in the Aegean between the Ottoman Empire and Imperial Russia. On his return he published the first volume of his Voyage pittoresque de la Grèce, which was a great success and facilitated his intellectual and political career. He became a member of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres
Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres
The Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres is a French learned society devoted to the humanities, founded in February 1663 as one of the five academies of the Institut de France.-History:...
in 1782, then a member of the Académie française in 1783. He was ambassador to Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
from 1784 to 1791, taking advantage of this chance to discover Greece. In Constantinople he gathered about him a semi-formal academy where gentlemen engaged in recording the beauties and treasures of the city gathered.
Choiseul-Gouffier visited Athens, where he coveted the Parthenon
Parthenon
The Parthenon is a temple on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, dedicated to the Greek goddess Athena, whom the people of Athens considered their virgin patron. Its construction began in 447 BC when the Athenian Empire was at the height of its power. It was completed in 438 BC, although...
's metopes, obtained a firman, as Elgin did later, to remove antiquities from the Acropolis, and sent to France a part of the Parthenon frieze which was two metres long, and was part of the sculpture collection he bequeathed on his death to the Louvre, where it now resides. His marble bust of Marcus Aurelius, found by the French consul Louis Fauvel in Attica in 1789, was sold in 1818; it was later acquired by the Musée du Louvre, whilst an Apollo
Choiseul-Gouffier Apollo
The Choiseul-Gouffier Apollo is a lifesize marble statue formerly in the collection of the comte Marie-Gabriel-Florent-Auguste de Choiseul-Gouffier , member of the académie française and French ambassador to the Sublime Porte from 1784 until the fall of the monarchy. It is now conserved in the...
previously owned by him is now in the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
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The French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
changed the course of his life. Refusing to obey the Convention, he refused his recall to France for fear of being guillotined. His goods in France were seized and another envoy sent out to replace him. After a year spent under siege in the embassy, Choiseul Gouffier emigrated in 1792 to Russia, where he was named Director of the Academy of Arts
Imperial Academy of Arts
The Russian Academy of Arts, informally known as the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, was founded in 1757 by Ivan Shuvalov under the name Academy of the Three Noblest Arts. Catherine the Great renamed it the Imperial Academy of Arts and commissioned a new building, completed 25 years later in 1789...
and Imperial Public Library
Russian National Library
The National Library of Russia in St Petersburg, known as the State Public Saltykov-Shchedrin Library from 1932 to 1992 , is the oldest public library in Russia...
of Russia. Empress Catherine the Great became friends with him and gave him lands and a domain in what is now Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
. (His descendents lived in Lithuania until 1945 when, hunted by the Communists, the last of the Choiseul-Gouffiers fled to Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
and died there in 1949.)
He only returned to France upon Napoleon's amnesty to exiled nobles at the start of the First Empire
First French Empire
The First French Empire , also known as the Greater French Empire or Napoleonic Empire, was the empire of Napoleon I of France...
in 1802. Finding his friend Talleyrand, he refused to participate in the government of the Empire, and remained faithful to Louis XVIII
Louis XVIII of France
Louis XVIII , known as "the Unavoidable", was King of France and of Navarre from 1814 to 1824, omitting the Hundred Days in 1815...
. He published the second volume of his Voyage pittoresque de la Grèce in 1809 and built himself a house imitating the Erechtheion. He was named a Minister of France and Peer of France upon the Bourbon Restoration
Bourbon Restoration
The Bourbon Restoration is the name given to the period following the successive events of the French Revolution , the end of the First Republic , and then the forcible end of the First French Empire under Napoleon – when a coalition of European powers restored by arms the monarchy to the...
. Excluded from the Académie française for having emigrated, he regained his seat in 1816. The third volume of his Voyage pittoresque de la Grèce was published posthumously in 1822.
Works
He published his impressions as Voyage Pittoresque en Grèce (Brussels 1782), often reprinted, and republished as late as 1842, as Voyage pittoresque dans l’Empire Ottomane. It presented many little known monuments, set in an idealised Greece crushed by Ottoman domination and desiring to rediscover and reawaken its liberty. This romantic vision of modern-day Greece was taken apart by several other travellers at the start of the 19th century. Like them, he suggested one should go see these sites in person to better comprehend the ancient authors, walking round sites with their texts in one's hand, "to feel more live the different beauties of the pictures traced by Homer, by seeing the images he had in his eyes" ("pour sentir plus vivement les beautés différentes des tableaux tracés par Homère en voyant les images qu'il avait eues sous les yeux"). His narrative allowed his readership to get to know previously unknown regions of Greece, such as the Cyclades. He asked his protege, the painter Lancelot Théodore Turpin de Crissé, to produce the engravings for the second volume.His other works include a Dissertation sur Homère, a mémoire
Mémoire
In French culture, the word mémoire, as in un mémoire is used for a piece of writing allowing the author to show his or her opinion on a given subject, logically approaching a series of facts in order to arrive at a recommendation or conclusion...
on hippodrome
Hippodrome
A hippodrome was a Greek stadium for horse racing and chariot racing. The name is derived from the Greek words "hippos and "dromos"...
at Olympia
Olympia, Greece
Olympia , a sanctuary of ancient Greece in Elis, is known for having been the site of the Olympic Games in classical times, comparable in importance to the Pythian Games held in Delphi. Both games were held every Olympiad , the Olympic Games dating back possibly further than 776 BC...
, and Recherches sur l'origine du Bosphore de Thrace
Thrace
Thrace is a historical and geographic area in southeast Europe. As a geographical concept, Thrace designates a region bounded by the Balkan Mountains on the north, Rhodope Mountains and the Aegean Sea on the south, and by the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara on the east...
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