Full Name: Agostini, Leonardo
Gender: male
Date Born: 1593
Date Died: c. 1669-1670
Place Born: Grosseto, Tuscany, Italy
Place Died: Rome, Lazio, Italy
Home Country/ies: Italy
Subject Area(s): gems (worked stones) and numismatics
Overview
Numismatist and gem scholar. Agostini worked during the reign of Pope Urban VIII as the antiquarian to the Barberini family. His letters, written to the family while in exile (1646-50) today form a trove of information on the archaeological activity of the time. After the return of the Barberini, Agostini continued to collect for them, arranging their collection into one of the most comprehensible schemas of the time. He was appointed commissioner of collections under Pope Alexander VII, directing the excavations of the Roman Forum and baths near San Lorenzo in Panisperna. His writing on carved gems, Le Gemme antiche figurate (1657) was issued with the assistance of Giovanni Pietro Bellori. The work organized gems according to theme, identifying them by subject matter. Adolf Furtwängler cited him in his Die Antike Gemmen of 1900.
Selected Bibliography
Le gemme antiche figurate. Rome: Apresso dell autore, [part I,] 1657, [part II] 1669; Gemmae et sculpturae antiquae depictae. Amsterdam: Apud Abrahamum Blooteling, 1685.
Sources
“Agostini, Leonardo.” Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, vol. 1, pp. 10-11.