Aubin-Louis Millin de Grandmaison

Who was Aubin-Louis Millin de Grandmaison?

Aubin-Louis Millin de Grandmaison was an antiquary and naturalist erudite in various domains, who followed Jean-Jacques Barthélemy as curator of the Cabinet des médailles et antiques of the former French royal library and took an interest in medieval art, which was just beginning to attract serious attention, as well as classical culture.

During the French Revolution he was imprisoned in 1793 as a result of his campaigns against Jacobins in the Chronique de Paris, which he edited. At the end of a year's term, he was freed following the Thermidorian Reaction, to teach archeology at the nationalised royal library, reestablished as the Bibliothèque nationale; there he also served as conservateur-professeur in the department of antiquities and in 1799-1800 as president of the Conservatoire de la Bibliothèque nationale de France.

As a naturalist he joined Pierre Marie Auguste Broussonet and Louis-Augustin Bosc d'Antic to form the first Linnean society in the world, the Société linnéenne de Paris. His Éléments d’Histoire naturelle formed part of the curriculum of the École centrale Paris.

At the same time he was known for the many articles he published on Greek vases. In 1806, appeared his Dictionnaire des Beaux-Arts. From 1807 to 1811, appeared the four volumes of his Voyage dans les départemens du Midi de la France, accompanied by an atlas. In 1811 he travelled in Italy and Sicily, and afterwards published designs of the mosaic paving in the cathedrals of Apulia.