MONTOR, JEAN-ALEXIS-FRANÇOIS ARTALIO de. - French diplomat and writer, b. 21 July 1772 in Paris, d. there 12 Nov. 1849. Attached to the French legation in Stockholm in 1792, he then joined the royalist army of the émigrés commanded by the Prince of Condé. Sent to Rome on a mission, he became attached to Italy, formed friendships with many people and acquired an uncommon knowledge of men and affairs. After the coup d'état of 18 Brumaire (1799), while remaining loyal to the Bourbons, he entered the service of the new regime and became first secretary of the French legation in Rome, under Cacault.
Charged with affairs in Tuscany in 1806, he was recalled to Paris the following year and, appointed imperial censor, took the opportunity to devote himself to the writing of works of various kinds. Since he was in Stockholm in 1792, when Gustav III was assassinated, he took the occasion to publish the Histoire de l'assassinat de Gustave III, roi de Suède, par un officier polonais, témoin oculaire (Paris 1802). In 1808 he published under the pseudonym of "member of the Academy of Cortona" a volume on Italian painting before Raphael, which subsequently went through two further editions (Considérations sur l'état de la peinture en Italie dans les quatre siècles qui ont précédé Raphaël, ibid. 1808), and a book on the catacombs of Rome (Voyage dans les catacombes de Rome, ibid. 1810), with the partial translation of Bosio's well-known volume. From 1811 to 1813 there also appeared his translation of the Divina Commedia. With the Restoration he returned to a diplomatic career. Secretary of legation in Rome from 1814 to 1816, he returned there in 1819 and remained until 1830. On the fall of the Bourbons he retired into private life, devoting himself exclusively to letters. He wrote a great deal, and above all published monographs on the pontiffs Pius VII, Leo XII and Pius VIII, whom he had personally known during his diplomatic activity in Rome (Histoire du pape Pie VII, 2 vols., Paris 1936; Histoire du pape Léon XII, 2 vols., ibid. 1843; Histoire du pape Pie VIII, ibid. 1844).
Bibliography
Silvio Furlani