Full Name: Ducati, Pericule
Gender: male
Date Born: 1880
Date Died: 1944
Place Born: Bologna, Emilia-Romagna, Italy
Place Died: Cortina d'Ampezzo, Belluno, Veneto, Italy
Home Country/ies: Italy
Subject Area(s): Classical
Overview
Classicist, fascist collaborator. Pericule Ducati grew up in a bourgeois family originally from Trento. He attended the University of Bologna studying Greek and Latin literature under Giosuè Carducci (1835-1907) and archaeology under Edoardo Brizio. According to the Italian XIX century academic model, he studied classical archaeology at various universities including, in particular, Rome where he studied under the Italian art historian Luigi Pigorini (q.v.) and ancient Roman topography under Rodolfo Lanciani. His 1903 dissertation on classical sculpture involved one of the concepts that would occupy him his entire life: the transmission of antique iconography in other cultures. In 1906-1907 he visited southwestern Greece in order to observe archaeological classical tradition and to study history of Greek pottery under the Austrian researcher Emanuel Löwy (1857 -1938). After a brief appointment as Ispettore ai Musei e Scavi (1909), he was named to the chair in classical archaeology in Catania in 1912. He moved to a professorship in Turin and finally to Bologna in 1920. There he combined his teaching position with that of director of the Museo Civico. As Brizio and Löwy had imparted to him, he employed an academic German tradition of instruction scheme providing a clear and general preparatory course and more specific monographic part. The latter pedogogical technique was marked by visits to the local museums in accordance with the Vienna School teaching tradition. In 1920 he was appointed Classical archaeological history Professor at University of Bologna. He was twice Dean of the Faculty of Arts in Bologna (1923-1929 and 1943-1944), and also Member of the Accademia dei Lincei and he was a member of the High Council for Antiquities and Fine Arts of Italy. Ducati collaborated with the fascist government of Benito Mussolini, less, some say, out of a political than for the need to remain researching in his field. His political affiliations clearly forced his hand, however, in publications. In 1927 he wrote Origine e attributi del Fascio littorio, a book sponsored by the Association for Fascist Schools Libraries in Italy. He was a member to the PFR (partito fascista repubblicano) and was President of the Fascist Culture Institute of Italy. In the 1930s, he was selected by the Classical archaeologist J. D. Beazley and the Greek vase painting scholar Paul Jacobsthal to write a volume in their Bilder griechischer Vasen series, Pontische Vasen (1932). After the declaration of World War II, he was ambushed outside his home in Bologna on the Via Albertazzi, and struck by several bullets by the Italian partisans. He was transferred by a German ambulance to the hospital Codivilla heliotherapy Cortina d’Ampezzo (BL), where he died two months later of a related infection. Ducati is buried in the cemetery of Bologna. A portion of his library was donated to the Biblioteca Universitaria of Bologna as well as his letters and manuscripts. Ducati’s use of unorthodox sources and highly individual research attracted scholars who sought to reinvent the discipline themselves. These included the art historian Luciano Laurenzi (q.v.), who wrote a commemoration of Ducati, the archaeologist Maurizio Corradi Cervi (1904-1982), and Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli.
Selected Bibliography
L’arte classica: con 12 tavole in rotocalco e 949 riproduzioni d’arte nel testo, Nuova rist. corretta della 3. ed. interamente riveduta, Torino: Unione Tip.-Ed. Torinese, 1956; Preistoria e protostoria dell’Emilia. Rome: R. Ist. di Studi Romani, 1942; La pittura etrusca, presentazione di Pericle Ducati. Novara: Ist. geografico de Agostini, 1942; Die etruskische, italo-hellenistische und römische Malerei. Vienna: Deuticke, 1941; Roma antica. Florence: 1940; L’arte classica. Turin: Unione Tip. Editr. Torinese, 1939; L’arte in Roma dalle origini al sec. VIII, Istituto di Studi Romani. Bologna: Cappelli, 1938; Storia d’Italia L’Italia antica : dalle prime civiltà alla morte di Cesare (44 a.C.). Milan: Mondadori, 1938; La scultura romana. Florence: 1934; La scultura greca. Florence: 1933 – 1935; Bologna nella storia d’Italia. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1933; “Les forums impériaux.” Gazette des beaux-arts 6.Pér. 8.(1932): 65-88; “L’Ipogeo dei Volumni.” Emporium 74 (1931): 363-374; “Echi del Mantegna in Bologna.” Il Comune di Bologna 16 no. 4(1929): 19; “Il convegno dei triumviri in: Strenna storica bolognese.” 3 (1930): 7-17; “I vetri dorati romani nel Museo civico di Bologna.” Rivista del Reale Istituto d’Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte 1 (1929): 232-249; Prassitele. Florence: Le Monnier, 1928; Etruria antica. Turin: Paravia, 1925; Guida del Museo Civico di Bologna. Bologna: Merlani, 1923; L’arte classica. Turin: Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese, 1920; Storia dell’arte etrusca. Florence: Rinascimento del Libro, 1907; “L’ara di Ostia del Museo delle terme di Diocleziano.” Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire 26 (1906): 483-512.Giulia Savio Univeristy of Genoa-Italy
Sources
Serra Ridgway, F. R. “Ducati Pericle.” in: Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 1996, vol. 1, pag. 375; Paolo Paoletti, Vallucciole, una strage dimenticata, Le Lettere, 2009, p. 24. Quirino Giglioli. “Commemorazione del socio Pericle Ducati.” in, Rendiconti, Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia 27 (1953): 111-135; Laurenzi, Luciano. “Commemorazione di Pericle Ducati.” [?????] http://www.archiviostorico.unibo.it/System/27/551/Ducati.pdf.