Pierre Devambez (19 November 1902 in Paris – 14 January 1980 in Paris) was a 20th-century French Hellenist, archaeologist and historian of Greek art.
Biography The son of André Devambez, Pierre Devambez joined the École normale supérieure in 1922 and passed the agrégation des lettres in 1926. A member of the French School at Athens (1928–1933) and of the Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale, he sojourned in Istanbul from 1933 to 1937 and wrote there the Catalogue des Grands Bronzes.
From 1929 to 1933 he directed the excavations at Thasos, as again in 1953–1954, and the excavations of the Sinuri sanctuary in Caria (1935–1938). He also participated in the work at Xanthos (1950) and, from 1961 to 1963, at Laodicea on the Lycus.
Curator and chief curator of the Department of Greek and Roman antiquities at the Louvre from 1937, he was also in charge of Greek ceramics course at the École du Louvre. Providing classes at the École Normale Supérieure (1954), he moved the classical archeology seminar in the halls of the Louvre.
A director of a seminary in Archaic and Classical Greek religion at the École pratique des hautes études (1961–1967), he was elected a member of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres in 1970 and would preside the international commission of the Corpus vasorum antiquorum.
Selected publications 1932: Un quartier romain à Thasos (fouilles de 1925 à 1931) 1937: Grands Bronzes du musée de Stamboul 1939: La Sculpture grecque 1942: Sculptures thasiennes, in Bulletin de correspondance hellénique 1944: Le style grec, Larousse 1955: L'Art au siècle de Périclès 1959: Le Sanctuaire de Sinuri près de Mylasa, with E. Haspels 1960: Sculptures grecques 1962: Bas-relief de Téos 1962: La Peinture grecque 1966: Dictionnaire de la civilisation grecque, with R. Flacelière, P. M. Schuhl, R. Martin 1978: Grèce, Hachette 1983: Le monde non-chrétien, Gallimard.
Bibliography 1980: Pierre Demargne, Éloge funèbre de M. Pierre Devambez, in Comptes rendus de l'Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres 1980: F. Villard, Pierre Devambez, in Revue archéologique 1981: J. Pouilloux, Notice sur la vie et les travaux de Pierre Devambez, in Comptes rendus de l'Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres 1981: B. Holtzmann, Pierre Devambez 1902-1980, in Encyclopaedia Universalis 2007: Eve Gran-Aymerich, Les chercheurs de passé, Éditions du CNRS, 2007, (p. 750–751)
External links Pierre Devambez on data.bnf.fr Pierre Devambez on Encyclopedia Universalis Notice sur la vie et les travaux de Pierre Devambez on Persée