Dessiner l’antique. Les recueils de Jean-Baptiste Muret et de Jean-Charles Geslin
Résumé
Two artists, Jean-Baptiste Muret and Jean-Charles Geslin, spent years drawing antiquities in France's two main archaeological collections: the former at the Cabinet des Médailles of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France from 1830 to 1866, and the latter at the Louvre Museum from 1863 to 1870. Whether working with jewellery, bronzes or polychrome terracotta pieces from the East, Greece or Italy, the two artists created scientific and sensitive documentation, combining archaeological precision with artistic talent. Their collections, which bring together several hundred largely unpublished drawings, bear witness to a golden age of graphic documentation in museums, at the very moment when photography was developing. They are also a source of prime importance for understanding the taste for antiquity in the 19th century and the history of archaeology and French and European collections.