Monneret de Villard, Ugo

Archaeologist, epigrapher, and historian of ancient Christian and Islamic architecture. Monneret de Villiard began his career as an architect, later becoming an instructor of medieval architecture at the Politenico in Milan. His interest in archaeology led him to North Africa, where he studied Coptic art and its Greek and Egyptian origins. In 1923, Monneret de Villard completed a monograph on the Aswan, an Islamic necropolis. He was a major contributor to the scholarship on the Nubian region during the medieval period, leading several archaeological excavations in Addis Ababa. After moving to Rome in 1934, Monneret de Villard began studying Ethiopian art, as well as Babylonian and Iranian artistic practices. He was hired to teach Christian archaeology at the University of Rome, and received the national prize of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in1950. When he died in 1954, Monneret de Villard was working on a book about Iraqui textiles.