Louis-François Cassas

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Louis-François Cassas: Panorama of the Sarayspitze in Constantinople. Pera Museum, Istanbul

Louis-François Cassas (born June 3, 1756 in Azay-le-Ferron , Département Indre , † November 2, 1827 in Versailles ) was a French draftsman and landscape painter .

Louis-François Cassas: Fantasy landscape from ancient Greece, copy in black chalk, group of figures reworked with pen in black, squared, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne, inv. Hittorff estate, Ital. 309

Life

Cassas' father was a surveyor of the royal streets in the Ponts et Chaussés office . At the age of fourteen Cassas was sent to Tours , where he began an apprenticeship as a draftsman with the engineer Jean Cadet de Limay (1752–1802). The draftsman Aignan-Thomas Desfriches (1715-1800) recognized Cassas' talent and recommended him to his friend Louis Marie Bretagne de Rohan-Chabot , who had founded a drawing academy in his Paris city palace . Since 1755 Cassas attended this academy. His teachers there included Joseph-Marie Vien (1716–1809), a neo-classical painter and teacher of Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), Jean-Jacques Lagrenée (1739–1821), and the Rococo painter Jean- Baptiste Le Prince (1734-1781). From 1779 to 1783 Cassas went to Rome for the first time to study ancient monuments. A commission from a Société d'amateurs des Beaux Arts in 1782 took him to Sicily , Dalmatia and Istria to make illustrations of the antiquities on the east coast of the Adriatic . These drawings were published in Paris in 1802 in the form of 69 copper engravings in the two-volume work Voyage Pittoresque et Historique de l'Istrie et de la Damatie . The original watercolors are in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

From 1784 to 1786 he accompanied Count Choiseul-Gouffier on his mission as French ambassador in the Ottoman Empire to Constantinople . On his behalf, Cassas drew for the second volume of his Voyage Pittoresque de la Grèce , published in 1809.

Elevation of the facade of the Bel sanctuary in Palmyra, view from the north, black ink pen, washed, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne, inv. Hittorff estate, Ba. 011
City gate and street scene in Cairo, lead pen and pen in Brau, gray wash, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne, inv. Hittorff estate, Egy. 034

In the summer of 1785 Louis-François Cassas spent a month in the Syrian oasis town of Palmyra , where he made a total of 76 drawings, which he later reworked into classicist engravings in Rome under the influence of ancient buildings. The original sheets show that Cassas observed the monuments very closely, measured them with surprising accuracy and meticulously reproduced them. He thus proves to be a master of what we now call archaeological construction survey . The comparison of the original drawings with the engravings produced afterwards and the engravings finally published in the Voyage pittoresque is particularly revealing . Cassas visited the Holy Land and drew the ruins of Baalbek in Lebanon as well as numerous other monuments in Palestine , Cyprus and Asia Minor , many of which had never been recorded in this artistic documentary manner before. He visited Egypt from October to December 1785 and drew the antiquities of Alexandria , the pyramids of Giza and the mosques of Cairo .

From 1787 to 1791 he stayed in Rome again, where he married Serafina Corfetti in 1791. In 1792 the artist returned to France. The results of his work appeared in the Voyage Pittoresque de la Syrie, de la Phenicie, de la Palestine et de la Basse Egypte , the publication of which began in 1799. In 1806 he opened a gallery in his apartment in the Rue de Seine, in which he presented the results of his travels and gave an overview of world architecture. Cassas had to give up the gallery for business reasons, however, and the collection was acquired by the French state in 1813. In 1816 Cassas became a draftsman and Inspecteur des Travaux at the royal tapestry factory in Paris. In 1821 he was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor , in 1825 he was awarded the Order of St. Michael . Cassas died of a stroke on November 2, 1827 in Versailles .

drawings

In 1878 his drawing estate, which he had left to his eldest son, was auctioned. Jakob Ignaz Hittorff acquired parts of it , through whose estate they came into the graphic collection of the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne, where today the largest part (over 260 sheets) of the considerable graphic work of Louis-François Cassas is located. In 2016 the museum hosted an exhibition entitled Palmyra - What remains? Louis-François Cassas and his journey to the Orient .

Publications

  • Voyage pittoresque de la Syrie, de la Phoenicie, de la Palaestine et de la Basse Aegypte . Ouvrage divisé en trois volumes contenant environ trois cent trente planches. Gravées sur les dessins et sous la dir. you Cen. Cassas. Un discours préliminaire pour chaque vol. par le Cen. Volney . Impr. De la République, Paris 1800 (digitized version)
  • Voyage oiset historique de l'Istrie et de la Dalmatie . Rédigé d'après l'itinéraire de LF Cassas, by Joseph Lavallée . Ouvrage orné d'estampes, cartes et plans, dessinés et levés sur les lieux par Cassas. Née, Paris 1802 (digitized version)
  • Grandes vues pittoresques des principaux sites et monuments de la Grèce, de la Sicile et des sept collines de Rome . Paris 1813.

literature

  • Annie Gilet, Uwe Westfehling (ed.): In the spell of the Sphinx. Louis-François Cassas 1756-1827. Designer - Voyageur. A French draftsman travels to Italy and the Orient . November 19, 1994 - January 30, 1995, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours, April 22 - June 19, 1994, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, graphic collection. Zabern, Mainz 1994, ISBN 3-8053-1682-8 .
  • Andreas Schmidt-Colinet : Ancient monuments in Syria. The engravings from Louis-François Cassas (1756–1827) in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne. In: Kölner Jahrbuch. 29, 1996, pp. 343-548.
  • Uwe Westfehling: Cassas, Louis-François . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 17, Saur, Munich a. a. 1997, ISBN 3-598-22757-4 , p. 131.
  • Thomas Ketelsen (Ed.): Palmyra - What remains? Louis-François Cassas and his journey to the Orient. (= The un / certain look. Issue 20). Exhibition catalog. Cologne 2016, ISBN 978-3-938800-27-0 .
  • Elisabeth A. Fraser: Mediterranean Encounters: Artists Between Europe and the Ottoman Empire, 1774-1839. Penn State University Press, 2017, ISBN 978-0-271-07320-0 .

Web links

Commons : Louis-François Cassas  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Palmyra - What Remains? Louis-François Cassas and his journey to the Orient. Museum message. February 26, 2016. ( www.wallraf.museum ( Memento from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ))
personal data
SURNAME Cassas, Louis-François
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French draftsman and landscape painter
DATE OF BIRTH June 3, 1756
PLACE OF BIRTH Azay-le-Ferron , Indre department
DATE OF DEATH November 2, 1827
Place of death Versailles