Brunilde Ridgway
Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway (born 1929, Chieti) is an Italian archaeologist and specialist in ancient Greek sculpture.
Life
The daughter of Giuseppe Sismondo, a career army officer, and Maria (Lombardo) Sismondo, young Brunilde lived in Sicily and then in Ethiopia and Eritrea, where her father had been stationed during World War II. When her father was captured by the British in World War II and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in Kenya, she secured a job as a telephone operator at police headquarters in Asmara (Eritrea) where she learned to speak English.
After
In 1977, she was named Rhys Carpenter Professor of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology, a post she held until her retirement in 1994. In 1988, she won the
Views and opinions
Brunilde Ridgway is, in keeping with her mentor Rhys Carpenter, a follower of the radical questioning of the Meisterforschung, or search for the masterpiece or archetype that inspired a replica series, that dominated the history of Greek art since Adolf Furtwängler. Elaborating on Carpenter's remark that Greek sculpture is “the anonymous product of an impersonal craft,”[3] She maintains that the notion of the artistic personality didn't emerge in the West before the 15th century AD. She also addresses the Kopienforschung ("copy research") of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, who is finding a type statuary through its Roman copies, focusing on identifying the originality of Roman sculptors. Rather skeptical vis-à-vis the literary sources, she sticks to the stylistic analysis of the works.
Known for the safety of her erudition and for the stimulating quality of its analyses,[4] it has been criticized, like Carpenter, for what was described as a "devastating"[5] or "systematic scepticism”,[6] or revisionism.[7]
Selected writings
Her main works and writings are:
- Severe Style in Greek Sculpture, Princeton University Press, 1970.
- "The Aphrodite of Arles", in American Journal of Archæology, vol. 80, No. 2 (Spring 1976), pp. 147–154.
- The Archaic Style in Greek Sculpture, Princeton University Press, 1977 (revised and expanded edition in 1993).
- Fifth Century Styles in Greek Sculpture, Princeton University Press, 1981.
- Roman copies of Greek Sculpture: The Problem of the Originals,The Jerome Lectures University of Michigan Press, 1984
- "The State of Research in Ancient Art" in Art Bulletin, LXVIII (1986), pp. 8–23.
- Hellenistic Sculpture I: The Styles of ca. 331-200 BC, University of Wisconsin Press, 1990
- Fourth-Century Styles in Greek Sculpture, University of Wisconsin Press, 1997.
- "Prayers in Stone: Greek Architectural Sculpture (c. 600-100 B.C.E) " (the Sather Lectures 1996, vol. 63) (U. of CA Press, 1999)
- Hellenistic Sculpture II: The Styles of ca. 200-100 BC, University of Wisconsin Press, 2000. ISBN 9780299118204
- Hellenistic Sculpture III: The Styles of ca 100-31 BC, University of Wisconsin Press, 2002. ISBN 978-0299177102
- Second Chance: Greek Revisited Sculptural Studies, University of Wisconsin Press, Pindar Press, 2004. ISBN 978-1899828890
Notes
- ^ Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway — 1988 Gold Medal Award for Distinguished Archaeological Achievement https://www.archaeological.org/grant/gold-medal-award/
- ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2022-03-16.
- ^ Carpenter, Greek sculpture. A Critical Review, University of Chicago Press, 1960, preface.
- ^ E.g. Andrew Stewart, review of Hellenistic Sculpture I, Art Bulletin No. 65 (1983), p.175.
- ^ Alain Pasquier, "Exposer Praxitèle", Praxitèle, catalog of the exhibition in the Louvre museum, March 23–June 18, Paris, 2007, p.14.
- ^ Claude Rolley, La Sculpture grecque II : la période classique, Paris, 1999, p.242.
- ^ Olga Palagia, preface to Personal Styles in Greek Sculpture, Cambridge (MA), 1998, p.IX.
External links
- Brunilde S. Ridgway, Dictionary of Art Historians
