Léon de Laborde

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Léon de Laborde
Voyage de l'Asie Mineure , 1838

Marquis Léon Emmanuel Simon Joseph de Laborde (born June 13, 1807 in Paris ; died March 26, 1869 in Fontenay-en-Vexin , Département Eure ) was a French art historian , archaeologist , explorer and politician. From 1857 to 1867 he was General Director of the French National Archives .

Life

Léon de Laborde was the son of the diplomat Alexandre de Laborde (1773-1842) and his wife Thérèse Sabatier de Cabre (1780-1854). His grandfather was the entrepreneur and court banker Louis XV, guillotined in 1794 . , Jean-Joseph de Laborde . Like his father, Léon de Laborde was to embark on a political career and studied at the University of Göttingen .

In 1826 he and his father embarked on a long journey through Europe and the Middle East, visiting Florence , Rome , Naples , Corfu , Constantinople , Jerusalem and Alexandria , among others . During this trip he made numerous drawings of the places visited, ancient ruins and atmospheric pictures in Asia Minor and Syria . His father returned to Paris alone at the beginning of 1828, while Léon de Laborde traveled to the Nabataean rock city of Petra with the engineer and explorer Louis Linant de Bellefonds , whom he had met in Egypt . During the joint expedition to Petra, which was the longest undertaken by Europeans at the time, they extensively documented the architectural legacies of the ancient city, which was difficult to access. The travel diary with the drawings made by the two of them was published by the twenty-three year old de Laborde in 1830 under the title Voyage de l'Arabie Pétrée , in its time the first comprehensive publication on the city, which was only rediscovered in 1812 by Jean Louis Burckhardt for Western antiquity .

After returning to Europe, he entered the diplomatic service, which first took him to Rome in 1828 under François-René de Chateaubriand . After the July Revolution of 1830 , which led to the retirement of Chateaubriand, Léon de Laborde became Talleyrand's third secretary at the embassy in London , and in 1831 secretary at the embassy in Hesse-Kassel under his uncle Auguste Sabatier de Cabres.

In order to devote himself to his historical and literary studies, however, he soon left the diplomatic service, but not Kassel. Since he had distinguished himself as an engraver , he turned to the history of printing and published a series of works on this topic that he had begun in Germany: first Essais de gravure in 1833 , 1839 the Histoire de la gravure en manière noire , 1840 his research on the découverte de l'imprimerie . In 1841 he became a Member of Parliament for Étampes , where he succeeded his father. In the same year he published a Commentaire géographique sur l'Exode et les Nombres on the Second ( Exodos ) and the Fourth Book of Moses ( Numbers ), in which he presented the results of his geographical research in Palestine and the Middle East . As a result, he was elected to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1842 , also successor to his father, but failed to be re-elected as a member, which he won again in 1846. In 1847 he became curator for the antiquities of the Louvre , but lost his post in the February Revolution of 1848 , only to be reinstated in December of that year, now also responsible for the collections on the Middle Ages and Renaissance .

During this time Léon de Laborde turned primarily to archive studies and first published the three-volume work Les ducs de Bourgogne (1849–1852), which was devoted to the arts and crafts of France and the Netherlands in the 15th century. At the same time, the volumes on La renaissance des arts à la cour de France (1851–1855) were created. Other works, such as Athènes aux XVe, XVIe et XVIIe siècles (1855), followed. At the same time he was part of the contemporary art scene and jury member of the Great Exhibition in London in 1851 as well as president of the section for the fine arts of the World Exhibition in Paris in 1855 , after he had already been a member of the jury of the French Industrial Exhibition in 1844 and of the Salon de Paris in 1852 . Due to unbridgeable differences with the director of the Louvre, Alfred Émilien de Nieuwerkerke , he gave up the post of curator in 1854. In 1857 he became general director of the Archives nationales . In this position he initiated the publication of numerous large archives, including the Monuments historiques 1866 and the Actes du Parlement de Paris 1867. In 1864 he became commander of the Legion of Honor , and in 1868 a member of the Senate of the Second Empire , but fell seriously ill in the summer and became retired. He died on March 26, 1869.

His son was the officer and bibliophile Alexandre de Laborde (1853-1944).

Publications (selection)

  • Voyage de l'Arabie pétrée. Giard, Paris 1830 (English translation: John Murray, London 1836).
  • Voyage de la Syrie by MM Alexandre de Laborde, Becker, Hall et Léon de Laborde. Firmin Didot, Paris 1837 ( digitized version ).
  • Voyage de l'Asie mineure. Didot, Paris 1838 ( digitized ).
  • Histoire de la gravure en manière noire et son application à l'imprimerie. Jules Didot l'aîné, Paris 1839.
  • Débuts de l'imprimerie à Mayence et à Bamberg, ou Description des lettres d'indulgence du pape Nicolas V, pro regno Cypri, imprimées en 1454 . Techener, Paris 1840 ( digitized ).
  • Recherches de ce qu'il s'est conservé dans l'Égypte moderne de la science des anciens magiciens. J. Renouard, Paris 1841 ( digitized ).
  • Les Ducs de Bourgogne. Étude sur les lettres, les arts et l'industrie pendant le XVe siècle et plus particulièrement dans les Pays-Bas et le duché de Bourgogne. Three volumes. Plon, Paris 1849-1852 (digitized: Volume 1 , Volume 2 ).
  • La Renaissance des arts à la cour de France, étude sur le XVIe siècle. Two volumes. L. Potier, Paris 1850–1855 (digitized version: Volume 1 , Additions ).
  • Athènes aux XVe, XVIe et XVIIe siècles. Two volumes. J. Renouard, Paris 1854 (digitized: Volume 1 , Volume 2 ).
  • De l'Union des arts et de l'industrie, rapport fait au nom de la commission française de l'exposition universelle de Londres sur les beaux-arts et sur les industries qui se rattachent aux Beaux-arts. Two volumes. Imprimerie impériale, Paris 1856.
  • Les Archives de la France, leur vicissitudes pendant la Révolution, leur régénération sous l'Empire. Renouard, Paris 1867 ( digitized version ).
  • posthumous: Les Comptes des Bâtiments du Roi, 1528–1570, suivis de documents inédits sur les châteaux royaux et les arts au XVIe siècle, recueillis et mis en ordre par feu le marquis de Laborde. Two volumes. J. Baur, Paris 1877-1880 (digitized: Volume 1 , Volume 2 ).

literature

  • Georg Kaspar Nagler : The monogramists. Volume 4. Franz'sche Buch- und Kunsthandlung, Munich 1871, pp. 382–383 No. 1170 ( digitized version )
  • Henri Tribout de Morembert: Laborde, Léon-Emmanuel-Simon, Joseph de. In: Dictionnaire de Biographie française . Volume 18, Paris 1994, Sp. 1373-1374.

Web links

Commons : Léon de Laborde  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Christian Augé, Pascale Linant de Bellefonds: Deux Français à Pétra . In: Archéologia 262, 1990, pp. 48-59.
personal data
SURNAME Laborde, Léon de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Laborde, Léon Emmanuel Simon Joseph de (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French art historian, archaeologist, explorer and politician
DATE OF BIRTH June 13, 1807
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH March 26, 1869
Place of death Fontenay-en-Vexin