Roque Joaquín de Alcubierre

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Roque Joaquín (de) Alcubierre , also Rocque Joaquín (de) Alcubierre or Rocco de Alcubierre for short (* August 16 (birth or baptism) 1702 in Saragossa ; † March 14, 1780 in Naples ) was a Spanish archeology pioneer .

Life

Roque Joaquín de Alcubierre initially made a career in the Spanish military and was in the service of the Count of Burette . At the end of his career in Spain he was assistant to the engineer Cobos. When he went from Spain to Italy in 1734 , Alcubierre followed him. In the Kingdom of Naples , which is closely linked to Spain , he achieved the rank of captain as an engineer . When in 1738 he was building a palace for Charles III. When he came across ancient artifacts in Portici , he began to study them. At the suggestion of his friend, the surgeon Giovanni de Angelis, he was able to Charles III. get excited about the idea of ​​targeted excavations of ancient art. In the fall of 1738 he began excavating the ruins of Herculaneum with two or three workers .

In Herculaneum, Alcubierre was more of a treasure hunter than an excavator. Together with his workers, he looked specifically for representative finds such as sculptures , coins or frescoes . Alcubierre was personally only interested in the sculptures. When the theater was excavated, his limited vision went so far that he had the theater's bronze inscriptions thrown in the trash. He directed the excavations until they were temporarily closed in 1745. A bronze quadriga found in the theater was melted into busts of the Bourbon rulers.

In 1748 the clergyman Martorelli began the excavation in Pompeii under the supervision of Alcubierre. Although some interesting finds were made, Alcubierre quickly lost interest in Pompeii, which he mistakenly believed to be Stabiae , ended the excavations after a short time and then turned back to Herculaneum. From 1755 excavations were carried out again in Pompeii. Alcubierre left the scientific work, such as keeping the excavation diary or making drawings, to his two assistants Karl Weber (until 1764) and Francesco La Vega (from 1764). Thanks to both of them, Alcubierre's work did not turn out to be a complete catastrophe.

Alcubierre's limited view of things and his ruthless methods, which destroyed a lot, attracted a lot of criticism even in his day. One of his great critics was, for example, the founder of modern archeology , Johann Joachim Winckelmann . In his letters of the Herculanean discoveries , after visiting the excavation site in 1758, Winckelmann did not give de Alcubierre a good hair and only praised his assistant Weber, without whom, in his opinion, the location of the excavations on Vesuvius would be much more catastrophic. Out of envy of Weber's skill and reputation, Alcubierre hindered Weber at work wherever he could. Nevertheless he was at least formally head of the excavations of the Vesuvius cities until his death in 1780.

literature

  • Franco Strazzullo: Alcubierre - Weber - Paderni. Un difficile "tandem" nello scavo di Ercolaneo - Pompei - Stabia . Accademia di Archeologia, Lettere e Belle Arti, Napoli 1999 (Memorie dell'Accademia di Archeologia, Lettere e Belle Arti in Napoli, 12).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Alcubierre, Roque Joaquín de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Alcubierre, Roque Joaquín; Alcubierre, Rocco de; Alcubierre, Rocque Joaquín de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish archaeologist
DATE OF BIRTH around August 16, 1702
PLACE OF BIRTH Zaragoza
DATE OF DEATH March 14, 1780
Place of death Naples