Luigi Pernier: direttore “pel bene e l’avvenire”

Stefania Berutti Annuario della Scuola Archeologica di Atene e delle Missioni Italiane in Oriente LXXXVII (2009) [2010]: 69-77.

Abstract

The Italian School of Archaeology at Athens was born at a difficult moment both from the historical point of view of the Italian military participation in the Eastern Mediterranean and from the more specific political one of academic machinations and complicated bureaucracy. The fundamental stages of this genesis involved personalities who created the history of Italian archaeology and made an important contribution to the international discipline, such as Luigi Pernier, first Director of the School, who is linked in the archaeological bibliography with the Minoan palace of Phaistos, in Crete. Around Pernier’s figure move Federico Halbherr and Domenico Comparetti, the famous patrons of the young Italian School of Archaeology at Athens, as protagonists of the Italian cultural scene of those times; by following their correspondence and the official documents, a network can be mapped, which embraces the main archaeological museums of the peninsula (from Florence to Palermo, from Venice to Rome) and reach­es the territories of the African colonies (Cyrene and Tripolitania). So, Pernier is the Director “pel bene e l’avvenire”, as Comparetti writes in a sad letter who, not without political and bureaucratic complications, manages to establish the School at Athens, proving himself a true ambassador of Italian Archaeology, then enlivened by the zeal of the pioneers (among them, besides Halbherr, Paolo Orsi, Carlo Anti, Antonio Taramelli). His scholarly ability as well as his rash yet prudent nature were especially appreciated by Luigi Adriano Milani who appointed him as his successor as Director of the Archaeological Museum of Florence. There opens a second phase of Pernier’s scientific and human experience as the Director and Superintendent in Tuscany during the uncertain years of the First World War. The third phase will find him again as Director, this time in Crete, at the Italian Archaeological Mission. He will complete the publication of the Phaistos exca­vations, his first task on Greek soil, as well as the delicate works of restoration. Luigi Pernier’s carrier was cut short by a sudden illness on Rhodes, in his Greece, maybe due to the busy life of an archaeologist in the field and of a scholar always on the move.