GOUGH, RICHARD (1735-1809), English antiquary, was born in London on the 21st of October 1735. His father was a wealthy M.P. and director of the East India Company. Gough was a precocious child, and at twelve had translated from the French a history of the Bible, which his mother printed for private circulation. When fifteen he translated Abbé Fleury’s work on the Israelites; and at sixteen he published an elaborate work entitled Atlas Renovatus, or Geography modernized. In 1752 he entered Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he began his work on British topography, published in 1768. Leaving Cambridge in 1756, he began a series of antiquarian excursions in various parts of Great Britain. In 1773 he began an edition in English of Camden’s Britannia, which appeared in 1789. Meantime he published, in 1786, the first volume of his splendid work, the Sepulchral Monuments of Great Britain, applied to illustrate the history of families, manners, habits, and arts at the different periods from the Norman Conquest to the Seventeenth Century. This volume, which contained the first four centuries, was followed in 1796 by a second volume containing the 15th century, and an introduction to the second volume appeared in 1799. Gough was chosen a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1767, and from 1771 to 1791 he was its director. He was elected F.R.S. in 1775. He died at Enfield on the 20th of February 1809. His books and manuscripts relating to Anglo-Saxon and northern literature, all his collections in the department of British topography, and a large number of his drawings and engravings of other archaeological remains, were bequeathed to the university of Oxford.
Among the minor works of Gough are An Account of the Bedford Missal (in MS.); A Catalogue of the Coins of Canute, King of Denmark (1777); History of Pleshy in Essex (1803); An Account of the Coins of the Seleucidae, Kings of Syria (1804); and “History of the Society of Antiquaries of London,” prefixed to their Archaeologia.
GOUJET, CLAUDE PIERRE (1697-1767), French abbé and littérateur, was born in Paris on the 19th of October 1697. He studied at the College of the Jesuits, and at the Collège Mazarin, but he nevertheless became a strong Jansenist. In 1705 he assumed the ecclesiastical habit, in 1719 entered the order of Oratorians, and soon afterwards was named canon of St Jacques l’Hôpital. On account of his extreme Jansenist opinions he suffered considerable persecution from the Jesuits, and several of his works were suppressed at their instigation. In his latter years his health began to fail, and he lost his eyesight. Poverty compelled him to sell his library, a sacrifice which hastened his death, which took place at Paris on the 1st of February 1767.
He is the author of Supplément au dictionnaire de Moréri (1735), and a Nouveau Supplément to a subsequent edition of the work; he collaborated in Bibliothèque française, ou histoire littéraire de la France (18 vols., Paris, 1740-1759); and in the Vies des saints (7 vols., 1730); he also wrote Mémoires historiques et littéraires sur le collège royal de France (1758); Histoire des Inquisitions (Paris, 1752); and supervised an edition of Richelet’s Dictionnaire, of which he has also given an abridgment. He helped the abbé Fabre in his continuation of Fleury’s Histoire ecclésiastique.
See Mémoires hist. et litt. de l’abbé Goujet (1767).
GOUJON, JEAN (c. 1520-c. 1566), French sculptor of the 16th century. Although some evidence has been offered in favour of the date 1520 (Archives de l’art français, iii. 350), the time and place of his birth are still uncertain. The first mention of his name occurs in the accounts of the church of St Maclou at Rouen in the year 1540, and in the following year he was employed at the cathedral of the same town, where he added to the tomb of Cardinal d’Amboise a statue of his nephew Georges, afterwards removed, and possibly carved portions of the tomb of Louis de Brezé, executed some time after 1545. On leaving Rouen, Goujon was employed by Pierre Lescot, the celebrated architect of the Louvre, on the restorations of St-Germain l’Auxerrois; the building accounts—some of which for the years 1542-1544 were discovered by M. de Laborde on a piece of parchment binding—specify as his work, not only the carvings of the pulpit (Louvre), but also a Notre Dame de Piété, now lost. In 1547 appeared Martin’s French translation of Vitruvius, the illustrations of which were due, the translator tells us in his “Dedication to the King,” to Goujon, “naguères architecte de Monseigneur le Connétable, et maintenant un des vôtres.” We learn from this statement not only that Goujon had been taken into the royal service on the accession of Henry II., but also that he had been previously employed under Bullant on the château of Écouen. Between 1547 and 1549 he was employed in the decoration of the Loggia ordered from Lescot for the entry of Henry II. into Paris, which took place on the 16th of June 1549. Lescot’s edifice was reconstructed at the end of the 18th century by Bernard Poyet into the Fontaine des Innocents, this being a considerable variation of the original design. At the Louvre, Goujon, under the direction of Lescot, executed the carvings of the south-west angle of the court, the reliefs of the Escalier Henri II., and the Tribune des Cariatides, for which he received 737 livres on the 5th of September 1550. Between 1548 and 1554 rose the château d’Anet, in the embellishment of which Goujon was associated with Philibert Delorme in the service of Diana of Poitiers. Unfortunately the building accounts of Anet have disappeared, but Goujon executed a vast number of other works of equal importance, destroyed or lost in the great Revolution. In 1555 his name appears again in the Louvre accounts, and continues to do so every succeeding year up to 1562, when all trace of him is lost. In the course of this year an attempt was made to turn out of the royal employment all those who were suspected of Huguenot tendencies. Goujon has always been claimed as a Reformer; it is consequently possible that he was one of the victims of this attack. We should therefore probably ascribe the work attributed to him in the Hôtel Carnavalet (in situ), together with much else executed in various parts of Paris—but now dispersed or destroyed—to a period intervening between the date of his dismissal from the Louvre and his death, which is computed to have taken place between 1564 and 1568, probably at Bologna. The researches of M. Tomaso Sandonnini (see Gazette des Beaux Arts, 2e période, vol. xxxi.) have finally disposed of the supposition, long entertained, that Goujon died during the St Bartholomew massacre in 1572.
List of authentic works of Jean Goujon: Two marble columns supporting the organ of the church of St Maclou (Rouen) on right and left of porch on entering; left-hand gate of the church of St Maclou; bas-reliefs for decoration of screen of St Germain l’Auxerrois (now in Louvre); “Victory” over chimney-piece of Salle des Gardes at Écouen; altar at Chantilly; illustrations for Jean Martin’s translation of Vitruvius; bas-reliefs and sculptural decoration of Fontaine des Innocents; bas-reliefs adorning entrance of Hôtel Carnavalet, also series of satyrs’ heads on keystones of arcade of courtyard; fountain of Diana from Anet (now in Louvre); internal decoration of chapel at Anet; portico of Anet (now in courtyard of École des Beaux Arts); bust of Diane de Poiçtiers (now at Versailles); Tribune of Caryatides in the Louvre; decoration of “Escalier Henri II.,” Louvre; œils de bœuf and decoration of Henri II. façade, Louvre; groups for pediments of façade now placed over entrance to Egyptian and Assyrian collections, Louvre.
See A. A. Pottier, Œuvres de Goujon (1844); Reginald Lister, Jean Goujon (London, 1903).