VISCONTI, ENNIO QUIRINO

VISCONTI, ENNIO QUIRINO. – Archaeologist, born in Rome on 1 November 1751, died in Paris on 8 February 1818.

Supported financially by Prince Sigismondo Chigi, from 1775 onward he began publishing an entire series of important monographs illustrating monuments and inscriptions of ancient Rome. Fundamental is: Il Museo Pio-Clementino (7 vols., Rome 1782–1807), in which all the sculptures in the collection established in the Vatican by Clement XIV and Pius VI are described and critically illustrated.

Despite the environment in which he had been born and lived, he allowed himself to be won over by the innovative theories of the French Revolution and sent to Paris a list of Roman citizens particularly hostile to the papal government. This explains how he immediately adhered to the republican regime established in Rome by the French army in 1798 and took part in public affairs

first as Minister of the Interior and then as consul of the Republic, at the same time directing the antiquities section of the National Institute established in Rome on the model of the Institut de France. He soon came into conflict with the new rulers, however, because he opposed their embezzlements, with the result that he was removed from all his offices. The restoration of 1799 advised him to take refuge in Paris, where he was entrusted with directing the Museum of Ancient Sculpture of the Louvre, together with teaching archaeology and ancient history. And it was in Paris that he spent the last twenty years of his life, publishing there his major work, Iconografia greca, while he left Iconografia romana in the course of printing: both were the foundation of all subsequent studies in the field, despite the progress of archaeological science.

His son LUIGI (1791–1853) was one of the foremost architects of early nineteenth-century France: he was responsible for the plans for the enlargement of the Louvre commissioned by Napoleon III and for the tomb of Napoleon I in the crypt of the Invalides.