Horace de Viel-Castel

Marc-Roch-Horace de Salviac, Baron de Viel-Castel, known as Horace de Viel-Castel (16 August 1802 Paris –1 October 1864), was an art lover and collector, and director of the Louvre until 1863. A Bonapartist, he staunchly supported Napoleon III. He was an intimate of Princess Mathilde and of Alfred de Musset, the right arm of Nieuwerkerke until his disgrace on 12 March 1863.

His memoires, which covered the time from 1851 until his death in 1864, testify to the society of the Second Empire. Although rich in detail on history, plans, and policy, it is his prickly and malicious style which granted the author a dark posterity after their publication twenty years after his death: he was a misanthrope, and a reactionary. His favorite targets were Leon de Laborde, Prince Napoleon and Victor Hugo. Also notable was his anglophobia.

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