Jean Baptiste Louis Georges Seroux d'Agincourt

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Jean Baptiste Louis Georges Séroux d'Agincourt (born April 5, 1730 in Beauvais , † September 24, 1814 in Rome ) was a French art historian from the French Enlightenment . The Histoire de l'Art par les monumens, depuis sa décadence au IVe siècle jusqu'à son renouvellement au XVIe is his central work.

Life

Histoire de l'Art , Architecture, Plate XXIII, San Vitale in Ravenna
Histoire de l'Art , Architecture, Plate XL, Notre-Dame in Paris

Séroux d'Agincourt studies botany in Paris under Antoine de Jussieu and later becomes the main tax leaseholder ( Ferme générale ) under Louis XV. During this time he was in contact with the influential circles of the Enlightenment and the encyclopedists and is known to Rousseau , Voltaire and Buffon , among others , and frequented the salon of Madame de Geoffrin . He maintains numerous contacts with artists such as Boucher , Fragonard , Vernet , and Pigalle .

After his discharge from service at the court in 1777, he traveled to England , Germany and the Netherlands . The visit to Horace Walpole in Strawberry Hill in particular may serve as his first inspiration for his art history of the Middle Ages.

In 1779 he continued his journey through Italy to Rome. The project for the Histoire de l'Art par les monumens has already taken shape . It should be in the Winckelmann tradition and, as the first overview work, present the art of the Middle Ages, primarily using illustrations.

He begins to hire draftsmen for the engraving templates for his work and to collect material. Charles Percier , Humbert de Superville (1770–1849) and John Flaxman draw for him, among others . In Rome he frequented Cardinal Stefano Borgia's salon , was a close friend of Angelika Kauffmann and met Goethe , Herder and Alexandre Lenoir , among others. He also met the artists Antonio Canova and Jacques Louis David , about whose oath the Horatier d'Agincourt was critical expresses.

In 1789 the first image plates after Versailles are sent to the court of Louis XVI. sent, the outbreak of revolution (during which Seroux d'Agincourt is expropriated as an exile) and the Napoleonic Wars delay printing.

In 1804 he was elected a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences .

Meaning and method

The Histoire de l'Art par les Monumens was planned as the first overview work on the art of the Middle Ages and provides the reader to 325 panels over 1400 individual monuments in pictures . Up to the end of the 19th century it remained an authoritative figure work especially for the late antique and Byzantine Illumination . For the first time, an attempt is being made here to capture the entire epoch of post-ancient and medieval art, to structure it and to place it in a historical context. Séroux d'Agincourt stands at the transition from the normative view of art of the Enlightenment to a historicizing one of Romanticism . Through his rich contacts and extensive correspondence, Seroux d'Agincourt played an important role in the medieval interest around 1800.

Its scientific relevance, however, was overtaken by the emerging art history ( Karl Schnaase , Franz Kugler ) and the Middle Ages enthusiasm of Romanticism due to the delay in printing by more than 20 years .

Publications

  • Histoire de l'Art par les monumens, depuis sa décadence au IVe siècle jusqu'à son renouvellement au XVIe . Treuttel & Würtz, Paris 1810–23 ( digitized version )
  • Recueil de fragmens de sculpture antique en terre cuite . Treuttel & Würtz, Paris 1810

literature

  • Henri Loyrette : Séroux d'Agincourt et les origines de l'histoire de l'art médiéval , in: Revue de l'art 48, 1980, pp. 40-56
  • Hubert Locher: Art history as a historical theory of art 1750-1950 . Munich 2001
  • Ilaria Mariani Miarelli: Seroux d'Agincourt e l'Histoire de l'Art par les monuments. Riscoperta del medioevo, dibattito storiografico e riproduzione artistica tra fine XVIII e inizio XIX secolo . Bonsignori, Rome 2005. ISBN 88-7597-368-7
  • Daniela Mondini: The Middle Ages in Pictures - Séroux d'Agincourt and Art Historiography around 1800. Zurich InterPublishers, Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-909252-13-3

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 224.
personal data
SURNAME Seroux d'Agincourt, Jean Baptiste Louis Georges
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Séroux d'Agincourt, Jean Baptiste Louis Georges
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French art historian from the French Enlightenment
DATE OF BIRTH April 5, 1730
PLACE OF BIRTH Beauvais
DATE OF DEATH September 24, 1814
Place of death Rome