Léon Heuzey

Léon Heuzey described Cypriot terracottas for the Louvre without having excavated on the island. A former member of the French School at Athens, he had opened early Macedonian tombs at Pydna and became professor of archaeology at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1863. In 1870 he entered the Louvre as adjoint to Félix Ravaisson-Mollien, who had replaced the resigned Adrien de Longpérier, and in 1876-77 he supervised the new display of the Assyrian, Phoenician and Cypriot rooms¹.

In July 1876 Luigi Palma di Cesnola, in Paris, named Heuzey among those who had seen his gold collection³. When Heuzey listed the Cypriot terracottas in 1882, he referred to Cesnola's album of 1870 photographs of Golgoi⁴. He also corresponded occasionally with Melchior de Vogüé⁵.

In 1881 Heuzey became the first curator of the Department of Oriental Antiquities¹. His Catalogue des figurines antiques de terre cuite followed in 1882. It placed Cyprus among the "îles asiatiques" and read Cypriot sculpture as Assyrian in influence, transmitted through Phoenician workshops. Some Late Cypriot pieces appear in it without any recognition that they belong to the Bronze Age¹. Later Louvre provenance entries cite the catalogue for a Larnaca acquisition of 1871 from the Colonna-Ceccaldi and for pieces bought from the Pierides in April 1887⁶.

In 1884 he brought Edmond Pottier into the department to take charge of ancient ceramics. Pottier edited the second edition of the catalogue in 1923, with the plates of the exhausted album added, and called Heuzey "notre savant maître"¹.