Alessandro Della Seta

Alessandro Della Seta (born on 29. June 1879 in Rome , died on 10. September 1944 in Casteggio ) was an Italian archaeologist with the research priorities Etruscology and Classical Archeology .

Life

Della Seta was the son of Giuseppe Della Seta and Rachele Rosselli. He received his doctorate in 1901 from Emanuel Loewy at the University of La Sapienza in Rome. From 1905 he was an assistant at the Roman university and from 1909 inspector at the Soprintendenza alle antichità di Roma e dell'Etruria meridionale . In the same year he received the license to teach archeology and Greco-Roman art history at the Sapienza. He became a full professor of both subjects at the University of Genoa in 1913 and held this chair until 1926, when he took up the chair in Etruscology and Italian archeology at the University of Rome. During the First World War he was an officer and received a war award.

In 1919 he was also entrusted with the management of the Scuola Archeologica Italiana di Atene , which he kept until 1939. He was dismissed from this position as a Jew on the basis of the Manifesto della razza and the fascist racial laws passed as a result . After the withdrawal of the German troops in 1944, he was reinstated in office on July 1 of that year, but died only a few months later. Under his leadership, the institute significantly expanded its research and paid special attention to the culture and history of the Aegean . He initiated successful excavations on Lemnos in order to investigate the question of the origin of the Etruscans, which has been discussed since antiquity, and which established a relationship with the Tyrrhenians . Lemnos itself had been around since about 700 BC. Settled by Tyrrhenians. Here Della Seta was able to ideally and fruitfully combine his two main research areas.

Della Seta became a corresponding member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in 1928 and a full member in 1930 . In 1938 he was excluded due to the Italian racial legislation . He was a member of the Greek Archaeological Society and headed the archaeological section of the Enciclopedia Italiana from 1925 to 1930.

Fonts

• La genesi dello scorcio nell'arte greca . Reale Accademia dei Lincei, Rome 1907.
• Religione e arte figurata . Danesi, Rome 1912.
• Italia antica: dalla caverna preistorica al palazzo imperiale . Istituto italiano d'arti grafiche, Bergamo 1922.
• I monumenti dell 'antichitā classica . Società Anonima Editrice Dante Alighieri, Milan 1926.
• Il nudo nell'arte . Bestetti & Tumminelli, Milan, Rome 1930.

literature

• Daniele Manacorda:  Della Seta, Alessandro. In: Massimiliano Pavan (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 37:  Della Fratta – Della Volpaia. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1989, pp. 476-481.
• Marcello Barbanera: Alessandro Della Seta (1879-1944) . In: Gunnar Brands , Martin Maischberger (editor): Lebensbilder. Classical archaeologists and National Socialism . Rahden 2012 ( People - Cultures - Traditions. Studies from the research clusters of the German Archaeological Institute 2,1), pp. 51–63

Web links

• Biography in the Jewish Virtual Library