Fondazione Luigi Rovati: Atti

Italian edition onlyCount Francesco Mancinelli Scotti, descendent of an Umbrian noble family fallen on hard times, was gripped at roughly age forty by an “insane passion” for archaeology and digs, leading him to devote his next forty years to “devastating” northern Lazio. A man of momentous impulses, such as his enlistment with Garibaldi’s forces at age twenty, Francesco Mancinelli Scotti went on to become a tireless, and quite successful, excavator, collector and merchant of antiquities, selling what he found in digs to American collections and museums, often based on altered information on the pieces’ origins. This side of Mancinelli Scotti’s approach is of particular interest, given that he was active in the same years in which the government established an initial framework for regulating digs, preventing the indiscriminate export of archaeological materials abroad and keeping the antiquities on the market from being dispersed. The dual goal of this volume, therefore, is to portray Francesco Mancinelli Scotti, and the impact of his frenetic exploration, while also promoting further reflection on how best to safeguard our cultural heritage.

Italian edition onlyThe conference “Immaginare l’Unità d’Italia. Gli Etruschi a Milano tra collezionismo e tutela” was organized by the Superintendency of Archaeological, Artistic and Environmental Heritage for the Metropolitan City of Milan, the Municipal Council of Milan (Civico Museo Archeologico), the University of Milan (Department of Cultural and Environmental Heritage) and the Fondazione Luigi Rovati in connection with the exhibition Il Viaggio della Chimera. Gli Etruschi a Milano tra archeologia e collezionismo. The proceedings of the conference, the second stage of an in-depth research project on the Etruscans, address subjects regarding the history and specificity of Etruscan archaeological collecting as a phenomenon connected from the mid-19th to the early 20th century with nationalistic aspirations that saw the history of this people as the first experience of territorial unification under a common identity. The authors focus primarily on the major collectors who contributed to the development of archaeology in Italy, especially in connection with the city of Milan, interweaving the histories of the collections and of the institutions – universities, museums and institutes of research – that have taken up their physical and spiritual legacy of preservation and study. Attention then shifts to the close connection between collecting and preservation, addressing the evolution of activities and measures for the protection of antiquities all the way from the period prior to Italian unification up to the present national legislation with reference also to particular cases in the modern era.

Italian edition onlyThis book presents the proceedings of two international conferences on the Etruscan heritage and collecting in Europe from the 16th to the 19th century held in the splendid setting of the Palazzone di Cortona (1–2 November 2014 and 29–31 January 2016). Organized by the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa and the Municipal Council of Cortona, these events marked the culmination of the research project “The Etruscan Academy of Cortona: Collecting and the Republic of Letters in 18th-Century Europe”, supervised by Maurizio Ghelardi and directed by Ilaria Bianchi. Great scholarly importance attaches to the conferences, which addressed subjects connected with museology and collecting that have become a focus of antiquarian interest in recent years. The Etruscan world and collecting are also at the centre of the work of the Fondazione Luigi Rovati, whose Etruscan museum in Milan endeavours to play an active part in the study and valorization of the archaeological heritage, not least by developing solid relations with academic institutions inside and outside Italy. This approach could hardly fail to include Cortona and the Accademia Etrusca, with which collaboration has been established in support of research and scholarly debate. The Fondazione Luigi Rovati readily espoused the project of publishing the contributions of the scholars present at the conferences as a preliminary step towards in-depth examination of the processes whereby the collections of the major Italian and European museums were built up.