Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin and 11th Earl of Kinkardine ( Eng. Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin and 11th Earl of Kincardine ; July 20, 1766 , Broomhall , Fife , UK , - November 14 1841 , Paris , France ) - a British diplomat of Scottish descent who exported from Turkish Greece to Great Britain an exceptional cultural collection of ancient Greek art, now known as Elgin marbles .
| Thomas Bruce | |
|---|---|
| English Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin and 11th Earl of Kincardine | |
| Date of Birth | |
| Place of Birth | Broomhall, Fife , UK |
| Date of death | or |
| Place of death | Paris , France |
| Citizenship |  Great Britain |
| Occupation | |
| Father | |
| Mother | |
| Spouse | |
| Children | and |
The second son of Charles Bruce, 5th Earl of Elgin . He rose to the rank of general in the army, but served primarily in diplomatic posts: he was an envoy in Berlin and in Constantinople . Together with the artists invited by him, who measured and copied for him the ruins of ancient structures, Elgin traveled to Morea , where for ten years he searched and excavated. Based on the permission of Sultan Selim III “to take any piece of stone with inscriptions or images from the country,” Elgin brought to Britain an extensive collection of statues, architectural and sculptural fragments, inscriptions, plaster casts, vases, bronze, coins and cameos.
Due to the gap between France and Great Britain, Elgin, on his return trip from Turkey, was detained by Napoleon and received freedom only in 1806. His collection, later known as the Elgin Marbles , was shipped by sea to London in two hundred boxes, and part of the collection, which was arrested by the French, lay for several years in Piraeus and was received by the owner only in 1812.
Some contemporaries in Britain (among them Lord Byron in Childe Harold ) reproached Elgin for allegedly illegally taking and spoiling the priceless art monuments of Hellas; others claimed that he saved these monuments for mankind from complete destruction by the local population, which for centuries had been taking pieces of statues to the laying of houses and lime mortar. This debate continues to this day.
In 1816, the lord sold his collection to the British Museum for 35 thousand pounds (that is, at a loss; he spent 39 thousand).
Notes
- ↑ Encyclopædia Britannica
- ↑ SNAC - 2010.
- ↑ German National Library , Berlin State Library , Bavarian State Library , etc. Record # 118638033 // General regulatory control (GND) - 2012—2016.
Literature
- Elgin, Thomas Bruce // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.