Giovanni Battista Passeri (archaeologist)

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Giovanni Battista Passeri (born November 10, 1694 in Farnese , † February 4, 1780 in Pesaro ) was an Italian priest, archaeologist , poet and papal official.

Portrait of Giovanni Battista Passeri from the Biblioteca Oliveriana in Pesaro

Life

Giovanni Battista Passeri was the son of a doctor who moved to Pesaro in 1717. Passeri attended school in Orvieto and Rome and studied from 1711 at Giulio Vitelleschi and Giovanni Vincenzo Gravina at the La Sapienza University in Rome and in Perugia jurisprudence . He then first embarked on an official career in the Papal States, which brought him into various positions. He married in 1726 and had four sons with his wife, who died in 1738. In 1741 he was ordained a priest and became vicar general of the diocese of Pesaro , an office that he held until 1760. That year he became a court auditor in Bologna, but returned to Pesaro in 1771 to devote himself entirely to his studies. He felt particularly close to Pesaro and after his death left the city his collection of antiquities and natural history objects.

Passeri is considered the last important protagonist of the so-called etruscheria , a return to the Etruscans based primarily on local patriotism . He participated in several large edition projects, such as the Museum Etruscum by Antonio Francesco Gori , on whose third volume he contributed in 1743. He also intervened in the dispute over the interpretation of the Etruscan language and represented here in the Lettere roncagliesi an inductive-combinatorial method and thus a progressive position. After Gori died in 1757, Passeri was considered the most important exponent of Etruscan research. He continued Gori's work and wrote supplements to the hitherto most important work in Etruscology , the "de Etruria regali libri septem" by Thomas Dempster , which was only published by Thomas Coke from 1723 to 1726 , but written a hundred years earlier . His three-volume main work Picturae Etruscorum in vasculis was initially planned as a continuation of the Museum Etruscum , but then achieved independence. Passeri described 249 vases from various collections in detail, but unfortunately the quality of the images was not very good. Nevertheless, he tried to document all the important components of the figurative painting and the shape of the vases. The interpretation of the pictures with regard to the cult and everyday life of the Etruscans was very progressive. The attribution of the Greek vases found mainly in Campania to the Etruscans had already been disputed at that time, e.g. Johann Joachim Winckelmann correctly assigned them to the Greeks. The right use of the images for a cultural interpretation did not hit the right culture, but it was still of great importance as a historical research approach. It was not until 2008 that another 220 drawings by Passeri were published for the first time.

Passeri also dealt with other areas of archeology. He studied the inscriptions in the papal collection in Urbino and published his collection of Roman clay lamps early on. With his close friend Annibale degli Abato Olivieri he founded the Accademia Pesarese di scienze, lettere e arti . In addition, Passeri, who had a very broad, almost encyclopedic interest in many things, also dealt with fossils and contemporary majolica . In 2011 a hitherto unknown comedy Passeris entitled L'antiquario was presented, which deals with the image of the solitary antiquarian in a humorous way .

In addition to various other international and Italian academies and scientific associations, Passeri was a member of the Societas incognitorum in Olomouc in Moravia and the Royal Society in London , the Società Colombaria and the Accademia della Crusca in Florence as well as the Accademia dell'Arcadia and the Accademia Etrusca . He carried the title of Antiquarian del granduca di Toscana .

Publications (selection)

  • Lucernae fictiles cum animadversionibus. 3 volumes. Pesaro 1739/1743/1751.
  • Paralipomena in libros de Etruria regali. Lucca 1767
  • Picturae Etruscorum in vasculis. 3 volumes. Rome 1767/1770/1775.
  • Published posthumously : Novus Thesaurus gemmarum veterum. 3 volumes. Rome 1781/1783/1788

literature

Web links

Commons : Giovanni Battista Passeri  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Pesaro, Biblioteca Oliveriana Ms. 279, Text III. Ingo Herklotz : The antiquarian as a comic figure. A literary motif between Querelle and ancient scholarly method reflection . In: Ulrich Heinen (Ed.): Which antiquity? Competing receptions of antiquity in the baroque . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2011, ISBN 978-3-447-06405-7 , pp. 141-182 especially pp. 168ff. ( Digitized version ).
personal data
SURNAME Passeri, Giovanni Battista
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian archaeologist, poet and papal official
DATE OF BIRTH November 10, 1694
PLACE OF BIRTH Farnese
DATE OF DEATH February 4, 1780
Place of death Pesaro