Jean-Baptiste Vietty, (14 December 1787 - 1842) was a French sculptor and archaeologist.
Born at Amplepuis in the département of the Rhône, the son of a decorative plasterworker of Italian origin, Vietty worked in the ateliers of the painter Pierre Cogell, then of the sculptor and medallist Pierre Cartellier and the neoclassical sculptor Joseph Chinard. Vietty was placed in command of the sculptures being executed for the stock exchange of Saint Petersburg. At the Salon of 1822 he showed a plaster of the Nymphe de la Seine. At the Salon of 1824 he received the médaille d’or for a Homère méditant l’Iliade, His bronze version of the Medici Apollino in Florence is a fountain figure in the garden of the Musée des Beaux-Arts of Lyon (illustration).
A professor both of the fine arts and the classical languages, in 1831 he published a historic and analytic study of the Roman and Gothic monuments of Vienne, with drawings by Étienne Rey. [1]
Jean-Baptiste Vietty found a place among the scholars and artists of the Institut de France's Morea Expedition in 1829. A man of independent temperament, he and Edgar Quinet decided, however, to separate themselves from the other members of the expedition shortly after the team's arrival in Greece in March 1829. The two subsequently split and Quinet was forced by illness to return to France. Vietty, ignoring official orders to return to France in November, continued his research in the Peloponnese and Attica until the summer of 1831. Upon his return to France the commission for the Morea expedition examined his manuscripts and, judging them of exceptional value, recommended them for publication. Unable to complete his work by 1835, when his stipend ran out, Vietty accepted commissions for sculpture. Between 1835 and 1841, under financial constraints, Vietty pawned his manuscripts and drawings in order to survive.
He died at Tarare in the Rhône, without having published a single page of his research in the Morea. A posthumous eulogy at the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres in 1858 presented him as
one of the most remarkable scientific and artistic personalities of our day... A great artist, a true scholar, he loved Science and Art for themselves, without ambition, without recompense, retaining in poverty all his admiration and enthusiasm. There are many who will mourn him, and yet he was a happy man. It is much to be desired that the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres confide the examination and cataloguing of his papers to a special commission, or at the least to an eminent Hellenist [2]
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Nevertheless, all his manuscript notes on Greece have been lost, with the exception of two notebooks rediscovered in 2005 and partly edited. [3]
Jean-Barthélemy Hauréau was a 19th-century French historian, journalist and administrator.
The Prix Volney is awarded by the Institute of France after proposition by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres to a work of comparative philology.
Charles-Jean-Melchior de Vogüé was a French archaeologist, diplomat, and member of the Académie française in seat 18.
Jean Antoine Letronne was a French archaeologist.
The Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres is a French learned society devoted to history, founded in February 1663 as one of the five academies of the Institut de France. The academy's scope was the study of ancient inscriptions (epigraphy) and historical literature.
Jean-Baptiste Geneviève Marcellin Bory de Saint-Vincent was a French naturalist, officer and politician. He was born on 6 July 1778 in Agen (Lot-et-Garonne) and died on 22 December 1846 in Paris. Biologist and geographer, he was particularly interested in volcanology, systematics and botany. The standard author abbreviation Bory is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.
Jean Léon Marie Delumeau was a French historian specializing in the history of the Catholic Church, and author of several books regarding the subject. He held the Chair of the History of Religious Mentalities (1975–1994) at the Collège de France and was a member of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres.
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Antoine Thomas was a French linguist. He is known for his work with Adolphe Hatzfeld and Arsène Darmesteter, on the Dictionnaire général de la langue française du commencement du XVIIe siècle à nos jours, which was issued in parts from 1890 to 1900. He supplied etymological notes.
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Jean-Gabriel-Honoré Greppo was a French canon remembered for his research in the fields of archaeology and Oriental studies. He was related to canon Jean-Baptiste Greppo (1712–1767), known for his archaeological investigations of ancient Lyon.
Pierre Eugène Alexandre Marot was a 20th-century French medievalist historian, director of the École Nationale des Chartes. He was a member of the Institut de France, the Académie de Stanislas, the Société des Amis de Notre-Dame and the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres
Louis Charles André Alexandre Du Mège or Dumège,, was a French scholar, archaeologist and historian.
François Déroche is an academic and specialist in Codicology and Palaeography. He is a professor at the Collège de France, where he is holding "History of the Quran Text and Transmission" Chair.
Léon-Jean-Joseph Dubois (1780-1846) was a French illustrator and lithographer, also an archaeologist and curator at the Louvre museum.
The Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum is a collection of ancient inscriptions in Semitic languages produced since the end of 2nd millennium BC until the rise of Islam. It was published in Latin. In a note recovered after his death, Ernest Renan stated that: "Of all I have done, it is the Corpus I like the most."
The Prix Bordin is a series of prizes awarded annually by each of the five institutions making up the Institut Français since 1835.