BOLDETTI, MARCANTONIO. — Archaeologist, born in Rome in 1663, died there in 1749. A canon of S. Maria in Trastevere and a man of great piety, he was Custodian of the relics and cemeteries for 49 years, taking part in a very large number of excavations carried out solely to recover the relics of martyrs, not for scientific purposes. Although no care was taken of the galleries that were excavated and everything removable was taken away, he nevertheless kept an accurate record of the noteworthy objects that came to light.
He published a very rich collection of these, especially inscriptions, in the volume: Osservazioni sopra i cimiteri dei martiri ed antichi cristiani di Roma, aggiuntavi la serie di tutti quelli che fino al presente si sono scoperti e di altri simili che in varie parti del mondo si trovano, con riflessioni pratiche sopra il culto delle sacre reliquie (Rome 1720), which also contains the first description of all the catacombs then known in Italy. He subsequently continued to gather Marangoni (v.), but the fire that destroyed their shared house in 1737 destroyed everything and sapped the old man’s strength, so that he left the work to Marangoni. B. was too quick to see martyrs everywhere, and in his work he proceeds more with apologetic aims than by scientific method; but these were failings of the age. If he did not make better provision for the preservation of the cemeteries, it was because at that time they were regarded solely as quarries of holy bodies and not as archaeological monuments. The carelessness with which he published the inscriptions is largely the printer’s fault; as regards the paintings, he is no less valuable than Bosio. The discovery and identification of the catacomb of Commodilla and that of Trasone are due to him.