PORTRAIT OF LEON DE LUSIGNAN, PRINCE OF KORIKOS, KING OF ARM - Lot 87

PORTRAIT OF LEON DE LUSIGNAN, PRINCE OF KORIKOS, KING OF ARMENIA Business-card size photograph. Based on the portrait lithographed by Bertauts in Paris, titled in ink in Italian Leone XIII (sic) Re d'Armenia Marked on the back by the photographer Carcano of Milan. This colorful character claimed descent from the Lusignans, kings of Armenia. He claimed to have been born in Etchmiadzine in 1821, proclaimed king in 1846 in Erivan, then driven out by the Tsar. According to his detractors, he was born in the Armenian colony on the island of Java. When the Zeïtoun Armenians revolted in 1862, he approached Napoleon III to be recognized as king of the future independent state. After various stays in Berlin, London and Paris, he ended his miserable life in Milan in 1876. Our photograph is reproduced in Onnik Jamgocyan, L'Éveil de l'Arménie, éd. du Bosphore, 2021, p. 230.