See also: Lenoir

Marie Alexandre Lenoir , born on December 27th, 1761 with Paris, dead on June 11th, 1839 in Paris, was a Archéologue French. As an impassioned autodidact, Alexandre Lenoir will devote itself to the safeguard of the monuments of the past, the tombs (in particular those of Saint-Denis and Holy-Genevieve) and of the sculptures.

The destruction of the French revolution will be at the origin of the creation of the Musée of the French monuments. Alexandre Lenoir asks and makes accept, thanks to the support of Jean Sylvain Bailly, the meeting of all the objets d'art coming from the national goods in this museum. These objects were confiscated at the various religious houses and were stored in the same place to avoid their dispersion and their destruction.

He will be elected by the Constituante in 1791, and will gather the works saved the Couvent of Small Augustins which composes today part of the 3Ecole Nationale Sup3erieure of the fine arts.

The 1793, the Convention issued that the tombs of the “above kings” would be destroyed. Alexandre Lenoir was the witness of the destruction of the royal tombs, of the bones thrown in a pit. He fights against revolutionary vandalism but manages to save confusion the statues and the lying ones which he makes store with the convent of Small-Augustins.

In 1795, it opens with the public the museum French Monuments, it will be named by it administrator and will remain it during about thirty years.

Alexandre Lenoir will have to restore the essence of his collections to their former owners, public or deprived, under the Restauration, in 1816.

Iconography

• Pierre-Maximilien Delafontaine represented it in a table preserved at the Musée of Louvre, Portrait of Alexandre Lenoir, preserving of the Museum of the French Monuments (1761-1839), it holds the ballot box of ashes of Molière in front of the tomb of François Ier gone up with the museum.

External bond

• Page devoted to Alexandre Lenoir on the site insecula.com

Sources