Everything about Jean-fr D Ric Waldeck totally explained
Jean-Frédéric Maximilien de Waldeck (
March 16,
1766? –
April 30,
1875) was a
French antiquarian,
cartographer, artist and explorer.
Waldeck was undoubtedly a man of talent and accomplishments, but his love of self promotion and refusal to let the truth get in the way of a good story leave some aspects of his life in mystery.
At various times Waldeck said that he was born in
Paris,
Prague, or
Vienna, and at other times claimed to be a
German,
Austrian and
English citizen. He often claimed the title of
Count and occasionally that of
Duke or
Baron.
Waldeck said he'd traveled to
South Africa at age 19 and thereafter had begun a career in exploration. He returned to France and studied
art as a student of
Jacques Louis David. He said he'd traveled to
Egypt with
Napoleon's expedition. None of this has been independently verified; indeed most of Waldeck's autobiography before about 1820 (including his given birthdate) is undocumented and his name is absent from records of various early expeditions he claimed to have been on.
Waldeck made two major contributions to society. The first contribution, of which he's known for among scholars of Western art history, is republishing the notorious set of pornographic prints titled
I Modi. The second contribution is the exploration of Mexico and the publication of many examples of Maya and Aztec sculpture, although errors in his illustrations fostered misconceptions about Mesoamerican civilizations and contributed to
Mayanism.
The
I Modi prints are highly pornographic and accompanied sonnets by
Pietro Aretino. They were allegedly created by
Giulio Romano as paintings in the
Vatican after a dispute with the pope, and the engraver
Marcantonio Raimondi published them. The publication causes a furore in Rome, and the pope ordered that all copies be destroyed. As such, there's no known original printing of
I Modi in existence. What has survived is a series of fragments in the
British Museum, two copies of a single print, and a woodcut copy from the 16th century. Waldeck claimed to have found a set of tracings of the
I Modi prints in a convent near
Palenque in
Mexico. Although his story is dubious because there's no such convent, he did see, at the least, the fragments now in the British Museum because the fragments can be matched to his drawings.
Waldeck's first contact with the art of ancient
Mesoamerica seems to have been when he was hired by
Lord Kingsborough to make engravings based on drawings of the city of
Palenque. Waldeck's engravings were much more beautiful and artistic than the original drawings he worked from, and gave the monuments a decidedly
Egyptian look, in line with his patron's views that the ancient Mesoamerican
Native Americans were the
Lost Tribes of Israel.
In 1825, he was hired as a
hydraulic engineer by an English mining company in
Mexico. After this job he explored the
Pre-Columbian ruins of the country. Jean Fredric Waldeck is best known for his researching and documenting such
Ancient Maya sites as
Palenque and
Uxmal.
In 1838, Waldeck published
Voyage pittoresque et archéologique dans la province d'Yucatan pendant les années 1834 et 1836 (Paris), a volume of illustrations of
Mérida, Yucatán and Maya ruins, including those at
Uxmal. Dedicated to Lord Kingsborough, this book provided what Waldeck believed was further support for connections between the ancient Maya and ancient Egypt. His illustration of the
Pyramid of the Magician at Uxmal, for example, makes it look similar Egyptian pyramids.
Waldeck's illustrations of Palenque were chosen to accompany
Monuments anciens du Mexique (Palenque, et autres ruines de l'ancienne civilisation du Mexique) (1866) by
Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg. However, just as his earlier illustrations had implied connections between the ancient Maya and ancient Egypt, the ones included with Brasseur de Bourbourg's text invoked the
Classical antiquity of ancient Greece and Rome. His illustrations of panels of
Maya script in the Temple of Inscriptions at Palenque included clear depictions of heads of elephants (now known to be erroneous embellishments). This fueled speculation about contact between the ancient Maya and Asia and the role of the mythical lost continent of
Atlantis as a common link between ancient civilizations of the Old and New Worlds.
Waldeck published numerous
lithographs of what he'd come across. His last set of prints was published in 1866 when he celebrated his
centennial.
He was active up until his death, at the incredible claimed age of 109 years and 45 days. He supposedly died of a
heart attack while eying a beautiful woman near the
Champs-Élysées in Paris.
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