File talk:Grigori-langsdorff.jpg
Authors of the image (said to be unknown):
Another copy sits in the Bibliothèque centrale du Muséum nationale d'histoire naturelle in Paris. That original has been inspected recently (May 2013) and shows a hard-to-read (tiny letters) circular inscription in German: "Dem Freunde, gezeichnet von Dr. Bojanus, Profes. in Wilna. Gest[ochen] von F.L. Lehmann in Darmstadt 1809". The drawing thus was by Ludwig Heinrich Bojanus (1776-1827), Professor of Veterinary Sciences and Comparative Anatomy at the Imperial Russian University of Vilnius since 1806, previously veterinary doctor in Darmstadt (see article "Bojanus, Ludwig Heinrich" in the English Wiki), and the engraver was Friedrich Leonhard Lehmann (1787-1835), who practiced in Darmstadt until 1816, then 1816-1832 in Vilnius, finally 1832 until his death in Königsberg.
--83.76.130.1 16:52, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
Both Langsdorff and Bojanus had part of their early education at the Latin school of Bouxwiller (Bas-Rhin), before 1792, and may thus have been acquainted there already. In 1803, both were in Paris engaged in studies relating to Georges Cuvier's work, and are likely to have met again at that time (Langsdorff talks about this visit in the autobiographical sketch in the introduction to his Notes); Bojanus' stay there at the same time is attested in his correspondence with his sponsor in Darmstadt, the Kabinets-Sekretaer Schleiermacher, on deposit in Hessisches Staatsarchiv Darmstadt (digitally accessible). Bojanus was known early for his sketching skills. Later, both were in Russia, Bojanus teaching at the Imperial University of Vilnius (from 1806), Langsdorff after his return from the Krusenstern expedition (from about 1809) and may have met again there in those years. The date of the Lehmann gravure in the MNHN library, 1809, would seem to establish an ante quem dating for the portrait. The similarity between the portrait ascribed to Hercules Florence (1804-79) and the Lehmann gravure is so striking that the former must be assumed to derive from the latter. Florence knew Langsdorff only during the Amazonas expedition of the 1820s; Langsdorff had retired to Germany by 1829, where he died in 1852. The dating of the image shown here to 1848 is absurd.
