Adolphe Napoleon Didron
Adolphe Napoleon Didron , born with Hautvillers (the Marne), in 1806, died in Paris in 1868.
Biography
Knight of the Legion of Saint-Gregoire-the-Large honor and , archeologist, it was, under the Monarchie of July, secretary of the committee of historical work to the ministry for the State education and, under the Second Empire, professor of French archeology to the imperial Library. He founded the archaeological Annales .It is the reading of Notre-Dame de Paris , of Victor Hugo which woke up the passion of Didron for the Middle Ages and decided its vocation of archeologist.
In 1835, Guizot appointed it secretary of the historical committee of Arts and Monuments, of which also made part Mérimée, Purple-the-Duke, Victor Hugo, Victor Cousin. Didron had the responsibility of inventory and publish new documents concerning the French history.
In 1844, Didron founded the archaeological Annales . He assumed the direction until his death of it. Since 1844, Purple-the-Duke was one of the most notable collaborators. They continued to be published until 1881. They form a true encyclopedia of art to the Middle Ages.
Didron, which, in 1845, had created a bookstore specialized in the archeology, managed a long time by his/her brother, establishes in 1849 a manufacture of stained glasses.
In addition to a crowd of archaeological articles inserted in various periodic collections, elder Didron published: a archaeological Bulletin of the committee of Arts and Monuments (1840-1847); a History of God , iconography of the divine people; a Manual of iconography , etc
At the time where the French Romanticism redécouvre the the Middle Ages, Didron belongs to those which, like Prosper Mérimée and Purple-the-Duke, work effectively being studied, the protection and the restoration of the large medieval monuments.
In its time, work and the ideas of Didron exerted a great influence, which one notes for example in the writings of the Italian architect Camillo Boito, which takes as a starting point Didron to define the principles of the restoration of the old monuments.
To chapter IX of its novel, the Cathedral (1898), Joris-Karl Huysmans presents and discusses the theses of Didron on the iconography of the cathedral of Chartres.
Texts of A.N. Didron, in external bond
The " handbook of Greek Christian iconography and latine" , 1843 (in fact, translation of a handbook of the iconographe of the Mount Athos), to download
Christian iconography: History of God, 1843, to download
External bonds
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Obituary
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