Carlo Fea

Carlo Fea

Carlo Fea (2 February 1753 - 18 March 1836) was an Italian archaeologist.

Born at Pigna, in what is now Liguria, Fea studied law in Rome, receiving the degree of doctor of laws from the university of La Sapienza, but archaeology gradually attracted his attention, and with the view of obtaining better opportunities for his research in 1798 he took Holy Orders and became an Abbott. For political reasons he was forced to take refuge in Florence; on his return to Rome in 1799 he was imprisoned as a Jacobin by the Neapolitans, who at that time were occupying Rome, but was shortly afterwards freed and appointed Commissario delle Antichità and librarian to Prince Sigismondo Chigi. At Rome in 1781 Fea discovered a statue of a discus thrower, the so-called "Discobolus", one of the known Roman copies of the famous Greek original statue in bronze created by Myron.

Fea helped frame legislation to control the trade in, and excavation of, the antiquities of Rome, and undertook archaeological work on the Pantheon and the Forum there.

Fea revised and annotated an Italian translation of Johann Joachim Winckelmann's Geschichte der Kunst, and also annotated some of the works of Giovanni Ludovico Bianconi. Among his original writings he is best known for: Miscellanea filologica, critica, e antiquaria; and Descrizione di Roma Antica e Moderna.^[1]

Despite being qualified to do so, Fea never used the title of Abbott but rather that of a lawyer (Avv).

He died in Rome in 1836.

References

• Ridley, R.T., 2000, The Pope's Archaeologist: The Life and Times of Carlo Fea, Quasar. ISBN 88-7140-177-8
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.