Giulio Quirino Giglioli

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Giulio Quirino Giglioli (born on March 25, 1886 in Rome ; died on November 11, 1957 there ) was an Italian classical archaeologist , Etruscan , politician and fascist .

Life

Giulio Giglioli was the son of Alfredo Giglioli and his wife Pierina Galli. After attending grammar school, he began studying classical antiquity at La Sapienza University in Rome in 1904 , where he studied ancient history with Ettore Pais and Karl Julius Beloch , ancient topography with Rodolfo Lanciani and classical archeology and ancient art history with Emanuel Loewy . When Emanuel Loewy he was in 1910 with a thesis on the throne decorative reliefs of the Olympic Statue of Zeus at Olympia laureiert .

Antiquity management

In the same year he became assistant to the chair of archeology, then an employee of Lanciani until 1912. During this time he served as secretary of the archeology exhibition that was held in the Diocletian's baths , which had served as the Museo Nazionale Romano since 1889, for the 50th anniversary of the Unità d ' Italia , the unity of Italy proclaimed in 1861, was to take place in 1911 and for which he was also responsible for the exhibition catalog. His own research during these years focused on epigraphic and topographical issues and focused on individual monuments, especially Umbria and Lazio .

Apollo of Veji, Villa Giulia , Rome

In 1912 he successfully applied for the position of inspector of the Antiquities Administration at the National Archaeological Museum in Naples . There he devoted himself primarily to the reorganization of the Greek vases , but also took part in excavations, including in Pompeii . After a year he was transferred to the Museo Nazionale Etrusco in the Villa Giulia in Rome, where he turned to the Etruscans and Faliskern - who determined his further scientific life - under the direction of Giuseppe Angelo Colini (1857-1918) . As early as 1914 he began excavations in the area of ​​the Etruscan city of Veji , but had to interrupt this because of the 1915 conscription to the military. In the winter and spring of 1916, however, he was given special permission to continue the excavations. In this campaign he succeeded in discovering the large-format, archaic terracottas from Veii, among them the Apollo of Veii . Even if Giglioli was wrong in interpreting the functional context in which the statues belonged, he had a sure hand for the level of knowledge at the time in the stylistic assessment and chronological classification of these important examples of Etruscan art .

First professorships

In the following year 1917 he received the license to teach archeology and ancient art history at the University of Rome, in 1919 he followed Rizzo in the direction of the Museo Nazionale Etrusco and worked on three volumes dedicated to the museum holdings for the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum , which appeared in 1925, 1926 and 1927. At the university he increasingly represented the seriously ill Lucio Mariani in the chair of archeology, but successfully applied for the same professorship at the University of Turin in 1923 , which he soon gave up after a few months for the same position at the University of Pisa . As early as 1925 he moved again and accepted the chair for the ancient topography of Italy at the University of Rome. Here he developed an immense creative and organizational power over the next few years, which culminated in the exhibition to celebrate the 2000th birthday of Augustus , the first Roman emperor.

In 1926, Giglioli, a member of the City Council of Rome since 1920 and now appointed head of the city's cultural department, took part in the excavations and restorations of important Roman monuments: the Forum of Augustus , the Tomb of the Scipions and the Theater of Marcellus . Above all, however, this year he gave the impetus for the uncovering and freeing of superstructures and adjacent buildings of the Augustus mausoleum . In Italy, which has been ruled by Benito Mussolini and the fascists for four years , the uncovering of this grave monument of the founder of the empire, whom Augustus was considered to be and whose successors wanted to be understood, had considerable political dimensions. And so the decision to uncover the Duce was made personally.

At the same time Giglioli continued to pursue his Etruscan studies and in 1927 published together with Pericle Ducati the Arte etrusca , for which he contributed the introduction and the chapters on architecture and sculpture. The work was a synopsis of Etruscan art, at the height of the state of knowledge of its time, as the first national congress for Etruscan in Florence a year later was to prove. Regardless of this, from 1926 he established a Museo dell'impero romano , a museum about the Roman Empire , which conceptually went well beyond the exhibition organized by Lanciani for 1911 and whose material he took as a basis. In 1927, the museum, which formed the core of the Museo della Civiltà Romana , which was later founded , was inaugurated, and the number of exhibits doubled compared to the exhibition of 1911.

This was followed by a period of intensive occupation with Etruscan art and new excavations in Veji and in the nearby Minerva sanctuary of Portonaccio. Meanwhile, the progress of the excavations at the Augustus mausoleum gave rise to reflections at Giglioli, which revolved around the celebrations of the approaching 2000th birthday of Augustus on September 23, 1938. He presented his first ideas at the second congress of the Istituto nazionale di studi romani , which took place from April to May 1930. At the time, however, no one was thinking of an exhibition of the kind that was then realized. It was not until 1932 that Giglioli and Carlo Galassi Paluzzi Mussolini proposed the concept of Mostra Augustea . The exhibition should be embedded in the redesign of the Piazza Augusto Imperatore with the adjoining buildings of the Augustus Mausoleum and the Ara Pacis Augustae, and further excavations should bear witness to the continued greatness of the Roman Empire.

Mostra Augustea and Fascism

Mussolini appointed Giglioli director of the project, which was implemented in close coordination with the Duce. He was supported by Giuseppe Lugli , Antonio Maria Colini , Carlo Pietrangeli and Maria Floriani Squarciapino (1917–2003), a guard of outstanding colleagues and aspiring archaeologists. Exhibits from all over the world were brought together and presented in the exhibition comprising 82 sections. The exhibition comprised 200 original sculptures, 3,000 plaster casts, inscriptions from the beginnings of young Rome to late antiquity, enriched with plans, lithographs and photographs. There was also the large model of the Roman city center created by Italo Gismondi on a scale of 1: 250. The catalog published for the exhibition by Giglioli clearly established the connection between the “heroic” times and the ruling fascism and instrumentalized Augustus and the Golden Age of the Roman Empire in its spirit . For the scientific occupation with the culture of the Roman Empire, the exhibition, which was carried out on schedule, was a multiplier that should hardly be underestimated and promoted countless individual studies.

As early as 1935, when his monumental “Arte etrusca” appeared, which is still in use today , Giglioli was appointed to the chair of archeology and ancient art history at the University of La Sapienza and succeeded Giulio Emanuele Rizzo . In this position he also became director of the Museo dei Gessi - the plaster cast collection (today the Museo dell'Arte Classica ) - at the Sapienza, whose holdings he doubled. In the same year he was elected to the Italian parliament as a member of the Partito Nazionale Fascista . During this time he turned in vain against the destruction of the Meta Sudans , which had to make way for the Via dell'Impero , and the 1938 sale of the Diskobol Lancellotti to the German Empire .

Post-war years

After the end of the fascist regime and the liberation of Rome in June 1944, Giglioli was removed from office on July 8, 1944 due to his close ties to the fascist leadership and interned in a British labor camp in Padula . However, his chair was not filled and his student Ernesto Vergara Caffarelli (1907–1961) took over the substitution.

In early 1947 Giglioli was recalled to his chair. In the following year the Accademia di San Luca donated plaster casts of the gable cultures of Aegina restored by Bertel Thorvaldsen to the Museo dei Gessi in his honor . In order to give the research at the Archaeological Institute of Sapienza its own publication organ, Giglioli founded the journal Archeologia classica in 1949 , based on the American Journal of Archeology and the Revue archéologique and provided with its own section Cronache del Museo dei gessi . With the opening of the Museo della Civiltà Romana in 1955, which included parts of the exhibitions of 1911, the Museo dell'impero romano and the Mostra augustea in terms of its holdings, the museum endeavors that Giglioli had pursued throughout his life came full circle. In 1956 Giglioli retired and died in Rome in 1957.

Academic memberships

Publications (selection)

Romolo A. Staccioli offers a bibliography of the writings of Giulio Quirino Giglioli: Giulio Quirino Giglioli: nota biografica e bibliografica. In: Archeologia classica. Volume 10, 1958, pp. 2-8.

  • Corpus vasorum antiquorum. Italia. Volume 1: Museo nazionale di villa Giulia in Roma. Fascicle 1. Union académique internationale, London / Milano 1925.
  • Corpus vasorum antiquorum. Italia. Volume 1: Museo nazionale di villa Giulia in Roma. Fascicle 2. Union académique internationale, London / Milano 1926.
  • Corpus vasorum antiquorum. Italia. Volume 1: Museo nazionale di villa Giulia in Roma. Fascicle 3. Union académique internationale, London / Milano 1927.
  • Museo dell'Impero Romano. Museo dell'Impero Romano, Rome 1929.
  • L'arte etrusca. Treves, Milan 1935.
  • Arte Greca. Two volumes. Vallardi, Milan 1955.

literature

personal data
SURNAME Giglioli, Giulio Quirino
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Giglioli, Giulio
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian classical archaeologist, etrucologist, politician and fascist
DATE OF BIRTH March 25, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Rome
DATE OF DEATH November 11, 1957
Place of death Rome