Jean-Jacques Boissard

Place: Besançon

Born: 1528

Death: 1602

Biography:

Jean-Jacques Boissard was an antiquary and Neo-Latin poet. He was born in Besançon, France and educated at Leuven. He secretly left the seminary there and travelled through Germany to Italy, where he remained several years and was often reduced to poverty. His time in Italy gave him a taste for antiquities, and he formed a collection of artefacts from Rome and its vicinity. He then visited the islands of Greece, but illness obliged him to return to Rome. Here he completed his collection, and returned to France; but not being permitted to profess publicly the Protestant religion, which he had embraced some time before, he withdrew to Metz, where he remained till his death.