He was an artist, collector, aesthete—a man born into the lesser nobility who happily mixed with the hoi polloi. A distinguished diplomat, Dominique Vivant Denon (1747–1825) also delighted in producing priapic engravings and a racy novel—Point de Lendemain (No Tomorrow), which luridly explores the illicit pleasures of a one-night stand. Not surprisingly, he was welcomed in the salons of Paris, where he met the painter Jacques-Louis David and the empress Josephine, wife of Napoleon. When Denon learned that Napoleon was assembling a cast of luminaries—biologists, geologists, chemists, architects, artists, botanists and even a composer and a poet—to accompany his army in the conquest of Egypt, Denon lobbied high-placed friends to secure a berth in this unique academy. After Napoleon routed the Mamluk forces in Lower Egypt in late 1798, Denon set out with a detachment of French troops on a six-month mission to Upper Egypt—traveling as far south as the first cataract of the Nile. Sketchbook in hand, the 51-year-old Denon managed to keep up with the troops while producing hundreds of drawings of ancient temples, tombs and monuments. Upon returning to France, he organized his notes and paintings into a memoir, Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Égypte, pendant les campagnes du général Bonaparte (Journey to Upper and Lower Egypt, During the Campaigns of General Bonaparte), which was published in 1802. The book created a mania for things Egyptian. Denon was lionized by the public and named director general of Napoleon’s museums and mint, as well as head of the Gobelin tapestry and Sèvres porcelain factories. When he died in 1825, “the eye of Napoleon” was hailed as one of the fathers of Egyptology.
He was an artist, collector, aesthete—a man born into the lesser nobility who happily mixed with the hoi polloi. A distinguished diplomat, Dominique Vivant Denon (1747–1825) also delighted in producing priapic engravings and a racy novel—Point de Lendemain (No Tomorrow), which luridly explores the illicit pleasures of a one-night stand. Not surprisingly, he was welcomed in the salons of Paris, where he met the painter Jacques-Louis David and the empress Josephine, wife of Napoleon. When Denon learned that Napoleon was assembling a cast of luminaries—biologists, geologists, chemists, architects, artists, botanists and even a composer and a poet—to accompany his […]
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