Baron de Saint Odile

The Baron de Saint Odile (Mathieu-Dominique Charles Poirot de la Blandinier) was born in Blamont in Lorraine in the early eighteenth century. After the Habsburg-Lorrainers took over Tuscany in exchange for Lorraine (which was given to the Polish King Stanislaus Leszczynski), Saint Odile served on the Tuscan Council in Vienna, becoming its Secretary from 1744-52. In 1752, he was sent as Tuscan ambassador to Rome, where he lived in grand style at the villa Medici (whose gardens he restored), serving until 1774. A confidante of several popes and of cardinals such as Alessandro Albani, the great collector of antiquities and patron of Winckelmann, Saint Odile was the first person to excavate the Licenza villa site. Little is known of his work (including exactly when it took place, though sometime in the period 1760-61 would be a good guess) because he did not publish an account. The excavations are first mentioned in Domenico De Sanctis' Dissertazione sopra la villa d'Orazio (Rome 1761), so they must have taken place before 1761. Saint Odile was fired by Tuscan Archduke Pietro Leopoldo in 1774 for various improprieties, and he died in retirement the next year in Aix-en-Provence.