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4 unusual facts about Michel Amelot de Gournay


Michel Amelot de Gournay

In 1682 he was appointed ambassador to Venice, in which post he took with him as secretary his tutor, the connoisseur Roger de Piles.

Jacques Savary des Brûlons' encyclopedic summing-up of the contemporary state of commercial economics, Dictionnnaire universel de commerce (1723), was dedicated to him.

The envoy representing Great Britain on that occasion was the poet-diplomat Matthew Prior.

His purchase in 1713 of a Paris house in rue Saint-Dominique, faubourg Saint-Germain, the Hôtel Amelot de Gournay, which had been begun as a speculation the previous year by the architect Germain Boffrand and was in course of construction, revealed the daring of the architect and the courage of the patron.



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