Giuseppe Fiorelli
Giuseppe Fiorelli (born June 8, 1823 in Naples , † January 28, 1896 there ) was an Italian archaeologist and numismatist .
Fiorelli began studying law at the age of eighteen, but switched to archeology. As early as 1844 he became an employee in the supervision of the archaeological excavations in Naples and as a young man at the end of the 1840s inspector of the excavations in Pompeii . Because of his liberal political stance, he was released after the revolution in 1849 and temporarily imprisoned. In 1853 he entered the service of the Count of Syracuse, a brother of King Ferdinand II. After the end of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the establishment of the Kingdom of Italy, Fiorelli became professor of archeology at the University of Naples at the end of 1860, and three years later director of the National Museum in Naples and head of the excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum . In 1875 he went to Rome as general director of museums and excavations. He was a member of the Italian Senate (since 1865), the Accademia dei Lincei , since 1865 a corresponding member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences , since 1873 an honorary member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and since 1876 of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg . In 1879 he was accepted as a foreign member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and in 1891 of the Académie des Beaux-Arts .
Fiorelli systematized and modernized the excavation method in Pompeii. He secured the excavated buildings from collapse and the effects of the weather. Unlike previous excavators, he excavated from above and did not expose the streets first and then the houses from the side. He paid particular attention to finds that documented everyday life in the city, such as charred bread in a bakery. Fiorelli invented the method of pouring plaster of paris into the cavity left by corpses in the hardened ash, thus creating a plaster model of the dead. This gave him an impressive testimony to human life and suffering in the lost city. This method had already been used to pour out smaller cavities left by organic residues such as furniture or tree roots.
literature
- Egon Caesar Conte Corti : Fall and Resurrection of Pompeii and Herculaneum . Droemer Knaur, Munich undated, pp. 179-183 (first 1940).
- Dizionario del Risorgimento Nationale , Vol. 3, 1933, pp. 348ff. ( online as a national license) .
- Gianluca Kannes: Fiorelli, Giuseppe. In: Fiorella Bartoccini (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 48: Filoni-Forghieri. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1997.
Web links
- Entry in the Senatori dell'Italia liberale database of the Historical Archives of the Italian Senate
- Writings by Giuseppe Fiorelli at Digital Library Numis
Individual evidence
- ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 80.
- ^ Joanne Berry: The Complete Pompeii . London 2007, p. 54 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Fiorelli, Giuseppe |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Italian classical archaeologist and numismatist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 8, 1823 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Naples |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 28, 1896 |
| Place of death | Naples |