Jean Baptiste Louis George Seroux D'Agincourt (5 April 1730 – 24 September 1814) was a French

archaeologist Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...

and

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the stu ...

. Born in

Beauvais Beauvais ( , ; pcd, Bieuvais) is a city and commune in northern France, and prefecture of the Oise département, in the Hauts-de-France region, north of Paris. The commune of Beauvais had a population of 56,020 , making it the most populous ...

, he was a descendant of the counts of Namur, and in his youth he served as an officer in a regiment of cavalry. Finding it necessary to quit the army in order to take charge of his younger brothers who had been left orphans, he was appointed a farmer-general by

Louis XV Louis XV (15 February 1710 – 10 May 1774), known as Louis the Beloved (french: le Bien-Aimé), was King of France from 1 September 1715 until his death in 1774. He succeeded his great-grandfather Louis XIV at the age of five. Until he reache ...

. In 1777 he visited England, Germany and the

Dutch Republic The United Provinces of the Netherlands, also known as the (Seven) United Provinces, officially as the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands (Dutch: ''Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Nederlanden''), and commonly referred to in historiography ...

; and in the following year he travelled through Italy, with the view of exploring thoroughly the remains of ancient art. He afterwards settled in Rome and devoted himself to preparing the results of his researches for publication. He died in 1814, leaving the work, which was being issued in parts, unfinished; but it was carried on by M. Gence, and published complete under the title ''L'Histoire de l'Art par les monuments, depuis sa décadence au quatrième siècle jusqu'à son renouvellement au seizième'' (6 vols. fol. with 325 plates, Paris, 1823). In the year of his death D'Agincourt published in Paris a ''Recueil de fragments de sculpture antique, en terre cuite''.

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* People from Beauvais 1730 births 1814 deaths French archaeologists French art historians 18th-century French historians Fermiers généraux {{archaeologist-stub