ANNE-CLAUDE, PHILIPPE DE TURBIERES, DE GRIMOARD, DE PESTELS, DE LÉVY, COMTE DE, Marquis d'Esterhazy, Baron de Bransac; was born at Paris in October 1692. He was the eldest of the two sons of John Count de Caylus lieutenant-general of the armies of the king of France, and of the Marchioness of Villette. The countess was the niece of Madame de Maintenon, and the author of a book entitled Souvenirs de Madame de Caylus, of which Voltaire published an elegant edition. Count de Caylus was only twelve years of age when his father died. He entered the corps of the Mousquetaires; and in his first campaign, in 1709, distinguished himself so much, that Louis XIV. rewarded him with an ensigncy in the gens-d'armerie. In 1711 he commanded a regiment of dragoons which was called by his own name, and signalized himself at the head of it in Catalonia. In 1713 he was present at the siege of Fribourg, where he was exposed to imminent danger in the bloody attack of the covered way. After the peace of Rastadt he travelled in Italy; and returned to Paris with so strong a passion for antiquities, that he resolved to devote himself entirely to that pursuit.

He had no sooner left the service of Louis than he set out for the Levant; and passed from Smyrna to Constantinople. He next visited Greece and the East, exposing himself to fatigue, contagion, and danger, in order to gratify his thirst for knowledge. He visited the ruins of Ephesus, and the other interesting cities of Ionia, under the escort of robbers belonging to a troop or band called Caracalaya; returned to Byzantium by the Dardanelles; and lastly repaired to Adrianople, where the sultan, Mustapha II., then resided. In February 1717 he returned home at the urgent solicitation of his mother. From that time he only left France to make two excursions to London. The Academy of Painting and Sculpture admitted him as an honorary member in the year 1731; and the Count in return spared neither labour, credit, nor fortune, to instruct and assist the artists. He wrote the lives of the most celebrated painters and engravers who had done honour to the academy; and, in order to extend the limits of the art, he collected, in three different works, new subjects for painting which he had met with in the works of the ancients.

Regretting the decay which almost immediately followed the disentombment of ancient paintings, he caused a large collection of coloured drawings, taken by Pietro S. Bartoli from antique pictures, to be engraved at his own expense, and presented them to the cabinet of the king of France. Of the engravings only thirty copies were published. The inimitable purity and precision of the originals renders it a collection entirely unique.

Count Caylus was himself an admirable engraver, and produced numerous works, finished in a slight masterly style. They are almost all executed with the point, and scarcely show traces of the graving-tool. Upwards of 200 of his plates "from the drawings of the great masters" are preserved in the Imperial Library of France; and his "Heads after Rubens and Vandyck" were preserved in the cabinet of Crozat. He engraved also a set of "Antique Gems;" and his Collection of "Heads after Lionardo da Vinci" was published in 1730.

Count Caylus was at the same time engaged in an enterprise alike illustrative of the greatness of Rome and the history of France. This consisted in finishing the edition of engravings taken from Mignard's drawings of Roman antiquities in France, which Colbert had begun. At his death he left this design unfinished, and bequeathed it in his last illness to M. Mariette.

In 1742 Count Caylus was admitted as an honorary member of the Academy of Belles-Lettres; and from that time the study of literature became his ruling passion. To it he consecrated his time and his fortune; he even renounced his pleasures to give himself wholly up to the object of making some discovery in the field of antiquity. Amidst the fruits of his research nothing afforded him so much gratification as his discovery of encaustic painting. A description of Pliny, too concise to give a clear view of the matter to an ordinary reader, suggested the idea of this art to M. de Caylus. He availed himself of the friendship and skill of M. Magault, a physician in Paris, and an excellent chemist; and by repeated experiments discovered the secret of incorporating wax with various tints and colours, and of rendering it manageable with the pencil. Pliny has made mention of two kinds of encaustic painting practised by the ancients, one of which was executed with wax on various substances, and the other upon ivory with hot punches of iron. It was the former kind, however, that Count Caylus had the merit of reviving; and M. Muntz afterwards made many experiments in order to carry it to perfection.

In the hands of Count Caylus literature and the arts lent each other mutual aid. But it would be endless to give an account of all his works. He published above forty dissertations in the Memoirs of the Academy of Belles-Lettres; and founded a prize of five hundred livres, the object of which was to explain, by means of authors and monuments, the usages of ancient nations. To render as generally accessible as he could the treasures which he had collected, he caused them to be engraved, and gave a learned description of them in a work which he embellished with eight hundred copperplates.

The strength of his constitution seemed to give him hopes of a long life; but a disease which settled in one of his legs entirely destroyed his health, and he expired on the 5th of September 1765. His character is thus drawn by a French biographer:—“A severe probity, a rooted aversion to flattery, great indifference about honours, a singular simplicity, perhaps sometimes a little dogmatism in his opinions, formed the basis of his character. In him young artists found both a guide and a friend; and with a discernment and a delicacy still more rare than generosity, he anticipated the wants of those whose progress would have been otherwise retarded by the narrowness of their means. Naturally beneficent, he sometimes amused himself when he met a pauper whose appearance indicated probity, by giving him a louis to get changed, and then concealing himself where he could enjoy the poor creature’s embarrassment when the person from whom he received the gold was not to be found. Caylus, indeed, never knew any other luxury than that of liberality. His dress, in particular, was so plain that, having one day stopped before a shop on which a sign-painter was painting a figure of St Francis, the latter, taking him for one of his comrades, asked his opinion respecting the work, which Caylus instantly gave him, and which delighted the painter so much that he put the pallet and pencil into the hand of his new acquaintance, and begged him to retouch the picture. Caylus mounted the ladder, and having succeeded to the entire satisfaction of the painter, the latter wished to take him to a neighbouring tavern, when the carriage of the Count arrived, and his footman opened the door for his master. The painter of saints and signs was stupefied with astonishment; but Caylus, taking him by the hand, said, *Au revoir, camarade, ce sera pour la première fois que nous nous rencontrerons.*”

The numerous literary works of Count Caylus may be divided into three classes; humorous pieces and romances; productions relative to the fine arts; and those which treat exclusively of antiquities. I. The first class consists of: 1. Les Ecossaises, ou les Oeufs de Pâques, Troyes, 1739 et 1745, 12mo; 2. Histoire de Guillaume Couche, 12mo; 3. Féeries Nouvelles, Paris, 1742, 2 vols. 12mo; 4. Soirées du Bois de Boulogne, Paris, 1748, 12mo; 5. Le Roi des Jeux, in conjunction with M. de Saffré, Cibillon the younger, Daclos, La Chassagne, Valentin, and others; 6. Contes Orientaux, 1743, 12mo; 7. Histoire du Milo, Cromel, dit Frétillon (Milo Cixion), Paris, 1743, 12mo; 8. Histoires Nouvelles et Misanthropes romanesques, Paris, 1743; 9. Quelques Aventures des Bals de Bois, 1745, 12mo; 10. Oïng Contes des Fées, 1745, 12mo; 11. Recueil de ces Misanthropes, 1745, 12mo; 12. Les Misanthropes, Paris, 1746, 12mo; 13. Les Fêtes romanesques et les Regrets des petites rues, 1747, 12mo; 14. Mémoires de l’Académie des Colporteurs, 1748, 8vo; 15. Le Calendrier féodal, translated from the Italian of Manini, Paris, 1740, 3 vols. 12mo; 16. Histoire du Vaillant Chevalier Tyran-le-Blanc, translated from the Spanish, London, 1775, 3 vols. 12mo; with some other pieces which are attributed to him. II. His works relating to the fine arts are: 1. Nouveaux Sujets de Peinture et de Sculpture, Paris, 1755, 12mo; 2. Tableaux tirés de l’Histoire, de la Mythologie, de l’Enchide, avec des Description, Paris, 1756, 4to; 3. Le Cabinet, Paris, 1757, 8vo; 3. Histoire et Héritage le Taubain, Paris, 1758, 8vo; 4. Les Vies de Moyse et de Lemontre en le Recueil des premières Peintres du Roi, Paris, 1759, 8vo; 5. Mémoire sur la Peinture à l’Escautique, 1755, 8vo; 6. Description d’un tableau représentant le sacrifice d’Iphigénie, 1757, 12mo; 7. Vie d’Edme Bouchardon, Paris, 1762, 12mo. III. His works relative to antiquities are: 1. Recueil d’Antiquités Egyptiennes, Étrusques, Grecques, Romaines, et Gauloises, Paris, 1752, and the years following, 7 vols. 4to; 2. Numismata Aurea Imperatorum Romanorum, without date, 4to, very rare; Recueil de Médailles du Cabinet du Roi, no date, 4to, also very rare; 4. Dissertation sur le Papyrus, Paris, 1758, 4to, in the Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions; 5. Recueil de Peintures antiques, Paris, 1757, fol.