Eugène Goupil

Charles Eugène Espéridion Goupil (born December 14, 1831 in Mexico City , † October 24, 1896 ) was a French - Mexican merchant, philanthropist and art collector . On April 11, 1889, he acquired a collection of Aztec codices and documents from Joseph Marius Alexis Aubin and added to them. After his death in 1898, his wife bequeathed the collection to the Bibliothèque nationale de France .

biography

Goupil came from a French- Aztec family with good contacts in France and Mexico. He was the first of a total of eleven children from the marriage of Joseph Victor Ferdinand Sénateur Goupil and the Spanish-Aztec Anna Benita Meléndez in 1830. The son of his brother Louis Cyriaque was the future artist Jean Charlot , his sister Alice later married Léon Harmel, the son of the ecclesiastical and social industrialist Léon Harmel . Goupil's paternal grandfather, Pierre Nicolas, came from Normandy and had been to Mexico again and again since 1820. His father bought the Pavillon de Sully of the New Castle of Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1851 , imported several agave plants from Tacuba in 1853 and bred them.

As a trader, Goupil followed in the footsteps of his father, so to speak, and expanded business relationships in France and Mexico. Among other things, he founded the jewelry company "Perles métalliques en toutes couleurs" in Chaumontel . On May 14, 1864, he married Augustine Élie, who later donated the so-called Aubin-Goupil or Boturini-Aubin-Goupil collection.

The Aubin-Goupil Collection

Figure of the rain god Tlaloc , CollectionE. Eug. Goupil, 17th century

This history of the collection goes back to a collection by Lorenzo Boturini de Benaducci , who started it between 1735 and 1743. When he was arrested in 1743, it was confiscated by the New Spanish viceroy Pedro Cebrián y Agustín . They were put into storage and neglected. Later, the viceroy Francisco de Güemes y Horcasitas , Conde de Revillagigedo I, gave it to the historian and antiquarian Mariano Fernández de Echeverría y Veytia, who was friends with Boturini . After his death, the collection came into the hands of the historian Antonio de León y Gama , after his death into the hands of his heirs. Alexander von Humboldt acquired 16 paintings from the collection during his visit to Mexico at the beginning of the 19th century. Today they are part of the holdings of the Berlin State Library . Parts of the original boturini collection are now in the Museo Nacional de Antropología , other parts of the boturini collection went to the hobby antiquarian Father José Pichardo. Around 1827 Aubin acquired significant parts of the collection from various sources and brought them to France in 1840.

Goupil, who had previously acquired works of art and artifacts , acquired the Aubins collection with 384 manuscripts through the intermediary of Eugène Boban , a merchant and Americanist friend of both, whose ostensible interest was to keep the collection in France, after the Mexican government had already shown interest in the collection had announced. Aubin had to sell the collection because he was in financial difficulties due to the Panama scandal. He also negotiated the purchase price for Goupil, whose Chaumontel company had just burned down at the time. Goupil invested a lot of time and money adding to and reorganizing the collection that he had hired Boban to organize. Goupil had expressed the wish to donate the collection to the Paris National Library after his death, but had not deposited a will at the time of his death. Despite lucrative offers, his wife followed his last will.

Web links

• Literature by and about Eugène Goupil in the catalog of the Ibero-American Institute of Prussian Cultural Heritage, Berlin

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Paul Gerald Baumann: Archives: The Last Bastion of Memory ( Memento of the original from February 27, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English; PDF; 180 kB). 
2. ^ The maternal side from John Charlot: Jean Charlot - Live and Work , 2003-2006.