Frédéric de Clarac

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Frédéric de Clarac , full name Charles Othon Frédéric Jean-Baptiste Comte de Clarac , known as Le Comte de Clarac , (born June 16, 1777 in Paris , † January 20, 1847 ibid) was a French archaeologist .

Life

Frédéric de Clarac was the son of General Roger Valentin de Clarac (1729-1813). He left France in 1793 after his castle in Buzet had been stormed. Frédéric de Clarac attended the Collège in Harcourt . In 1790 he stayed in Switzerland and Germany, in 1793/94 in Italy, then in Spain. He became an officer and lieutenant of the cavalry in the army of the Prince de Condé and went to Poland with them. In 1799 he was an orderly officer in the wake of the Duc d'Enghien . He then served in Poland in a Russian hussar regiment in Volhynia . In 1801 he returned to France after the general amnesty for the emigrants. Here he wrote to earn money for the Archives littéraires de l'Europe and frequented Madame Récamier's salon .

From 1808 to 1814 he was tutor for the children of Joachim Murat , King of Naples, and his wife Caroline Bonaparte in Naples . His stay in Campania encouraged him to devote himself entirely to archeology. In the castle of Portici he studied the frescoes from Pompeii, which were then exhibited there, and in 1813 also undertook an excavation in Pompeii. In September 1813 he returned to France as part of the Restoration . In 1816/17 he and other researchers such as Auguste de Saint-Hilaire accompanied Charles-Emmanuel-Sigismond de Montmorency-Luxembourg on a diplomatic mission to Brazil , where he made numerous drawings of South American landscapes.

Forêt vierge du Brésil , 1819. Paris, Louvre

In 1818 he was by Louis XVIII. appointed as the successor to Ennio Quirino Visconti as curator of antiquities in the Louvre , an office that he held until his death. In 1819 he exhibited his watercolor Intérieur d'une forêt du Brésil in the salon . In 1833 he went on a study trip through Great Britain to study the ancient sculptures in the collections there. From 1835 he had great financial difficulties, which in 1843 also forced him to sell his collection of antiques to the city of Toulouse .

In 1814 he became a knight of the Ordre royal et militaire de Saint-Louis , in 1816 a knight of the Legion of Honor , in 1828 an officer of the Legion of Honor, in 1828 a corresponding member of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences and in 1838 a free member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts . He was also an honorary member of the Society of Antiquaries of London and the Accademia Albertina in Turin.

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Sample pages from the Musée de sculpture antique et modern

In his position as head of the Louvre's collection of antiquities, Clarac first published a catalog of the museum's antiquities, which was expanded in several editions, but only contained brief descriptions and no images.

With his Musée de sculpture antique et modern , he primarily wanted to make image material available to the learned public. Based on the ancient sculptures of the Louvre, sculptures from as many collections as possible were to be presented in outline drawings sorted by thematic groups. Mainly through its inclusion in Salomon Reinach's Repertoire de la statuaire grecque et romain , Volume 1 of which is titled Clarac de poche ("Taschen-Clarac") and is a scaled-down reprint of Table Volumes II to V of the original edition, the work lasted for a long time in the 20th century the basic reference work for illustrations of sculptures, it offers an overview of practically all ancient statues known at the time. The text by Clarac, which represents the state of research of the early 19th century, found practically no reception. As a catalog, it has a strong antiquarian focus, based on the writings of the antiquarians of the 17th and 18th centuries, without a consistent concept and without any real art-historical consideration of the sculptures.

Publications (selection)

  • Fouille faite à Pompei en présence de SM la Reine des Deux Siciles, le 18 Mars 1813 . Naples 1813 ( digital ).
  • Description of the antiques du musée Royal commencée par M. le chevalier de Visconti, continuée et augmentée de plusieurs tables par M. le comte de Clarac, conservateur des antiques . Paris 1820.
  • About the statue antique de Vénus Victrix: découverte dans l'île de Milo en 1820, transportée à Paris et donnée au roi par M. le marquis de Rivière… Et sur la statue antique connue sous le nom de l'orateur du Germanicus, et d'un personnage romain en Mercure . Paris 1821.
  • Description of the ouvrages de la sculpture française des XVIe, XVIIIe siècle, exposés dans les salles de la galerie d'Angoulème . Paris 1824.
  • Second supplément à la Description des antiques du Musée royal . Paris undated (around 1825).
  • Musée de sculpture antique et modern, ou Description historique et graphique du Louvre et de toutes ses parties, des statues, bustes, bas-reliefs et inscriptions du Musée royal des antiques et des Tuileries et de plus de 2500 statues antiques… tirées des principaux musées et des diverse collections de l'Europe… accompagnée d'une iconographie égyptienne, grecque et romaine… . 6 text and 6 plate volumes, Paris 1826–1853 ( table of contents ).
  • Description of the Louvre royal museum of antiques . Paris 1830. 1848.
  • Mélanges d'antiquités grecques et romaines, ou observations sur plusieurs bas-reliefs antiques du musée royal du Louvre . Paris 1830.
  • Sur une inscription gravée sur une lame de plomb, trouvée dans une statue en bronze du musée du Louvre, et sur les signatures inscrites par les artistes grecs sur leurs ouvrages . Paris 1843.
  • Manuel de l'histoire de l'art chez les anciens . 3 volumes, Paris 1847–1849.
    • Vol. 1: Description of the museum of sculpture antique et modern di Louvre . Paris 1847.
    • Vol. 2: Catalog chronologique des artistes, écrivains et personages célèbres, généalogie des Ptolémée, les familles romaines . Paris 1847.
    • Vol. 3: Catalog des artistes de l 'antiquité jusqu' à la fin du VIe siècle de nôtre ère, avec les statues, mosaïques, pierres gravées, vases peints etc. portant les noms des artistes et les musées et collections particulières qui les portent . Paris 1849.
  • Description historique et graphique du Louvre et des Tuileries . Paris 1853.

literature

  • Alfred Maury: Notice biographique sur l'auteur . In: Frédéric de Clarac: Description historique et graphique du Louvre et des Tuileries . Paris 1853, pp. VII-XII ( digital ).
  • Salomon Reinach : Notice historique sur le Comte de Clarac . In: Salomon Reinach: Répertoire de la statuaire grecque et romaine . Vol. 1, Paris 1897, pp. XV-XLIV ( digital ).
  • JS de Sacy: Clarac, Charles-Othon-Frédéric-Jean-Baptiste de . In: Dictionnaire de biographie française vol. 8, Paris 1959, col. 1356-1357.
  • Pedro Corrêa do Lago, Louis Frank: Le comte de Clarac et la Forêt vierge du Brésil . Chandeigne, Paris 2005, ISBN 2-915540-21-7 .
  • Thomas Schmuck: Claracs “Forêt vierge du Brésil” as the first scientific representation of the rainforest. In: David Blankenstein u. a. (Ed.): "My second fatherland". Alexander von Humboldt and France. de Gruyter, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-05-006382-9 , pp. 207-214.
  • Dietrich Boschung : Clarac, Charles Othon Frédéric Jean-Baptiste, Comte de. In: Peter Kuhlmann , Helmuth Schneider (Hrsg.): History of the ancient sciences. Biographical Lexicon (= The New Pauly . Supplements. Volume 6). Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-476-02033-8 , Col. 235 f.

Web links

Commons : Frédéric de Clarac  - collection of images
personal data
SURNAME Clarac, Frédéric de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Clarac, Charles Othon Frédéric Jean-Baptiste Comte de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French archaeologist
DATE OF BIRTH June 16, 1777
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH January 20, 1847
Place of death Paris