Giovanni Becatti

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Giovanni Becatti (born December 5, 1912 in Siena ; died April 10, 1973 in Rome ) was an Italian classical archaeologist .

Life

Giovanni Becatti, son of Geremia Becatti and his wife Emma, ​​née Buzzagli, began studying humanities at La Sapienza University in Rome in 1929 at the suggestion of Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli after attending the "Francesco Guicciardini" high school in Siena . Here he studied classical archeology and ancient art history with Giulio Emanuele Rizzo and topography of ancient Italy with Giulio Quirino Giglioli .

With a managed by Giulio Giglioli work on the topography of ancient Todi he was in 1933 laureiert . In the same year he continued his education at the Scuola nazionale di Archeologi in Rome with a scholarship . In 1936 he received a scholarship from the Scuola Archeologica Italiana di Atene , which was then directed by Alessandro Della Seta . With the results of his Greek research on Hellenistic sculpture of Attica published in 1940 , he graduated from the Scuola nazionale di Archeologi in 1938 .

In 1938 he won the tender for the position of inspector of the Italian antiquities administration, which led him to Ostia Antica . Ostia and his excavation determined - despite his broad interests - the further scientific life of Giovanni Becatti. In 1940 he received the libera docenza for Classical Archeology and Ancient Art History.

During the Second World War , the excavations in Ostia more or less came to a standstill, which enabled Giovanni Becatti to concentrate more on his academic and university career. From 1941 to 1944 he was a substitute for the chair of archeology at the University of Pisa . Here he taught art history of the Minoan , Mycenaean and Archaic periods . In 1945 he finally became a substitute professor for Classical Archeology and Greek and Roman Art History at La Sapienza University.

The University of Milan appointed Becatti in 1953 as an associate professor of archeology and Greek and Roman art. He taught here until he accepted an appointment at the University of Florence in 1956 . During this time he did not give up his soprint tendency about Ostia. In 1964, he was offered the chair of archeology and Greek and Roman art at the University of La Sapienza, where Becatti succeeded Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli. In 1969 he retired.

Researches

As early as 1934 Giovanni Becatti published volume 130 for Orvieto for the Edizione archeologica della carta d'Italia al 100,000 - an archaeological map work on a scale of 1: 100,000 . At the same time, he worked on his tesi via Todi for Forma Italiae . The volume was published in 1938 as Regio VI. Umbria. Volume 1: Tuder-Carsulae. The first essays on Ostia began to appear in 1939. In 1940 his volume Musei comunali umbri was published as part of the international research project Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum .

Studies on various topics followed: On the one hand, the master of the gable figures from the Temple of Zeus in Olympia , which were reflected in volume 6 of the Quaderni per lo Studio dell'Archeologia edited by Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli ; on the other hand - inspired by the discovery of a round altar with a relief representation of the twelve gods in Ostia - with the work of Praxiteles , who according to Pausanias is said to have created a group of statues of these gods.

Gaetano De Sanctis as head of the Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana was able to win Giovanni Becatti for the editing of the archaeological department of the Enciclopedia Italiana in 1947 , which should be updated in a new edition. Later he was co-director alongside Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, and from 1966 director of the Enciclopedia dell'Arte Antica, Classica e Orientale . In 1951 Becatti published next to an investigation into the Meidias painter a fundamental work, as Bernhard Schweitzer called it as one of the best connoisseurs of the subject of his time, about the sculptor Phidias : Problemi fidiaci.

In 1953 began his commitment to the series Scavi di Ostia ("Excavations of Ostia"). While the first volume on topography, for which he wrote a comprehensive article on urban planning and urban development in Ostia, was still edited by Guido Calza in 1953 , in 1954, 1961 and 1969 he only published volumes 2, 4 and 6. Together with Filippo Magi, he published the Etruscan wall paintings of the Tomba degli Auguri and the Tomba di Pulcinella in 1956 .

With an investigation of the monumental Roman column monuments such as the Trajan Column and the Column of Marcus Aurelius with their ribbons of historical reliefs, he turned against the recognition of Roman art history as an independent subject in 1960. Teaching Roman art without knowing its dependency on Greek, especially Hellenistic, models was inconceivable for Becatti. In 1965 he published the volume on the art of classical music (L'arte dell'età classica) for the series “Le grandi epoche dell'arte” by the Sansoni publishing house . The work was reprinted in English by Thames & Hudson as early as 1968 and saw several reprints by 1978.

In the 1960s, Becatti usually only intervened with small contributions in scientific discussions in order to clarify his point of view on individual problems and to correct errors in the research approaches of others. A number of articles show that he was the last authoritative representative of the philological-art-historical research direction of Adolf Furtwängler . Understanding or apprehending art and art development in their historical dependence - options that Furtwängler certainly recognized - was far removed from him until the end, as his last contribution, Opere di arte greca nella Roma di Tiberio, shows.

Honors and memberships

Publications (selection)

  • Forma Italiae. Region VI, Umbria. Volume 1: Tuder-Carsulae. Danesi, Rome 1938.
  • Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum Italy. Volume 16: Musei comunali umbri. Libreria dello Stato, Rome 1940.
  • Il Maestro di Olimpia (= Quaderni per lo Studio dell'Archeologia. Volume 6). Sansoni, Florence 1943.
  • Meidias. Un manierista antico. Sansoni, Florence 1947.
  • Arte e gusto negli scrittori latini. Sansoni, Florence 1951.
  • Problemi fidiaci. Electa, Milan 1951.
  • Scavi di Ostia. Volume 2: I mitrei. Libreria dello Stato, Rome 1954.
  • Oreficerie antiche dalle minoiche alle barbariche. Istituto poligrafico dello Stato, Rome 1955.
  • with Filippo Magi : Tarquinii. Le pitture delle tombe degli Auguri e del Pulcinella. Istituto poligrafico dello Stato, Rome 1956.
  • La colonna coclide istoriata. Problemi storici, iconografici, stilistici (= Studi e materiali del Museo dell'Impero romano. Volume 6). "L'Erma" di Bretschneider, Rome 1960.
  • Scavi di Ostia. Volume 4: Mosaici e pavimenti marmorei. Libreria dello Stato, Rome 1961.
  • L'arte romana. Garzanti, Milan 1962.
  • L'arte dell'età classica. Sansoni, Florence 1965.
  • Scavi di Ostia. Volume 6: Edificio con opus sectile fuori Porta Marina. Libreria dello Stato, Rome 1969
  • Cosmos. Studi sul mondo classico. "L'Erma" di Bretschneider, Rome 1987 (collected writings).

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Giovanni Becatti: Attica. Saggio sulla scultura attica dell'ellenismo In: Rivista del Reale Istituto di archeologia e storia dell'arte. Volume 7, 1940, pp. 7-116 ( PDF ).
  2. ↑ Giovanni Becatti: Culto di Ercole ad Ostia ed un nuovo rilievo Votivo. In: Bullettino della Commissione archeologica comunale di Roma. Volume 67, 1939, pp. 37-60
  3. ↑ Pausanias 1,40,3.
  4. ↑ Giovanni Becatti: Un dodekatheon ostiense e l'arte di Prassitele. In: Annuario della Scuola archeologica di Atene. Neue Serie, Volume 1–2, 1939–1940, pp. 85–137.
  5. ^ Bernhard Schweitzer: Review of Giovanni Becatti: Problemi fidiaci. In: Gnomon Volume 28, 1956, pp. 561-569.
  6. ↑ Giovanni Becatti: Sviluppo della città urbanistico. In: Guido Calza (ed.): Scavi di Ostia. Volume 1: Topografia generale. Libreria dello Stato, Rome 1953, pp. 91-171.
  7. ↑ About Giovanni Becatti: Ninfe e divinità navy. In: Studi miscellanei. Volume 17, 1970-1971, pp. 1-66
  8. ↑ Giovanni Becatti: Opere di arte greca nella Roma di Tiberio. In: Archeologia Classica. Vol 25-26, 1973-1974, pp 18-53.
personal data
SURNAME Becatti, Giovanni
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian classical archaeologist
DATE OF BIRTH December 5, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Siena
DATE OF DEATH April 10, 1973
Place of death Rome