Anne Claude Philippe de Tubieres comte de Caylus

Caylus, Comte de ( Anne-Claude-Philippe de Tubières) (b Paris, 31 Oct. 1692; d Paris, 5 Sept. 1765). French antiquarian, collector, patron, writer, and amateur printmaker. Caylus came from a wealthy aristocratic family and at an early age distinguished himself as a soldier in the War of the Spanish Succession, but in 1715 he abandoned his military career to indulge a lifelong passion for the arts and antiquity. He was a friend of Watteau, of whom he wrote a biography (1748), but generally he was more interested in classical art than in the fashionable Rococo style. Among the artists he championed were Bouchardon and Vien, both of whom were in the vanguard of Neoclassicism. Caylus made a large collection of coins and ancient artefacts, which he catalogued in Recueil d'antiquités égyptiennes, étrusques, grecques, romaines et gauloises (7 vols., 1752–67). This is the most serious work of antiquarian research published in the 18th century and one of the most influential in spreading knowledge and enthusiasm for the works of classical antiquity. Caylus indeed is credited with being the first to conceive archaeology as a scientific discipline and in this respect Winckelmann acknowledged indebtedness to him.

Anne Claude Philippe de Tubières Caylus, comte de , 1692-1765, French archaeologist and antiquarian. Caylus learned drawing from Watteau. He traveled in Europe and Asia and became known as an etcher and as a patron of the arts. He was the champion of classical purity and influenced the development of the Louis XVI style. He is said to have initiated the scientific study of the antique. His collections are in the Louvre. Caylus's Recueil d'antiquités égyptiennes, étrusques, grecques, romaines, et gauloises (7 vol., 1752-67) is the major 18th-century work of antiquarian scholarship; it did much to encourage interest in and study of classical subjects.