Baron Dominique-Vivant Denon

Dominique-Vivant Denon, Baron , 1747-1825, French artist, writer, and archaeologist. He had a brilliant career as artist and diplomat under the ancien régime and followed Napoleon on his campaign in Egypt. In 1804 he became director-general of museums and was instrumental in bringing foreign masterpieces into the Louvre as the spoils of conquest. His accounts of his travels and his treatise on ancient monuments contain collections of his engravings of works of art. Denon was partly responsible for the design of the Vendôme Column, a monument to Napoleon.

Denon, Baron Dominique Vivant (1747–1825). French savant, he accompanied the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt (1798) as leader of the learned Commission on the Sciences and Arts that was to study Ancient Egyptian buildings and architecture and herald the birth of modern Egyptology. In 1802 he published his Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Égypte pendant les campagnes du général Bonaparte (Journey in Lower and Upper Egypt during the campaigns of General Bonaparte). An accurate source-book of Ancient Egyptian architecture, it had an extraordinary impact, triggering the C19 Egyptian Revival that at first was correctly described as ‘Egyptomania’, and was a major influence on Neo-Classicism. Denon was Director-General of Museums, and was in charge of the Musée Napoléon (now the Louvre). He supervised the design and production of the Sèvres Service Égyptien (a dinner-service sumptuously decorated with Ancient Egyptian themes and motifs), one of the high points of the Egyptian Revival, and was a major influence on the Empire style and on the work of Percier and Fontaine.

Bibliography

J. Curl (2005);
Denon (1802);
Humbert (1989);
Humbert (ed.), (1996);
Humbert,, Pantazzi,, & and Ziegler (1994);

Denon, Dominique-Vivant, Baron (b Givry, nr. Chalon-sur-Saône, 4 Jan. 1747; d Paris, 28 Apr. 1825). French engraver, draughtsman, archaeologist, diplomat, museum official, and writer. He was a much-travelled and much-liked man who had a highly varied career. In 1798 he accompanied Napoleon on his expedition to Egypt, recording his travels in Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Égypte (1802), illustrated from his own drawings (it was published in English in the same year as Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt). From 1804 to 1815 he was director of the national museums, and he played an important role in developing the collections of the Louvre, advising Napoleon on his choice of works of art to be looted from conquered territories. After Napoleon's final defeat in 1815 Denon went into retirement and worked on a general history of art, which he left incomplete at his death; it was posthumously published in four volumes in 1829. As an artist he worked mainly as an engraver, but he was also one of the first Frenchmen to take up lithography (1809).