Raffaele Garrucci

Raffaele Garrucci (22 January 1812 – 5 May 1885) was a historian of Christian art.

Biography

He was born in Naples to a wealthy family, entered the Society of Jesus at the age of fifteen, and was professed on 19 March 1853.

He taught in several Jesuit schools, and lectured in rhetoric, classical languages, Hebrew and archaeology.

He devoted himself to the study of the Church Fathers, also to Pagan and Christian antiquities; he and Giovanni Battista de Rossi became the principal disciples of Giuseppe Marchi. On his many journeys through Italy, France, Germany, and Spain, he collected much material for his archaeological publications.

He started to publish in 1854 and continued to write for the rest of his life. Five of the six volumes contain, respectively, the catacomb-frescoes - and paintings from other quarters - gold glasses, mosaics, sarcophagi, and non-sepulchral sculptures. The first volume is devoted to the theoretical part of the work, i.e. to a history of Christian art properly so called. In this vast collection Garrucci re-edited to some extent materials taken from earlier works. For hitherto unedited materials he used photographs or reproductions of some other kind. His engravings are not always very accurate, and in point of finish are inferior to those obtained by more modern processes.

The list of his publications covers 118 numbers on Sommervogel, Bibliothèque de la compagnie de Jésus (Brussels 1902), III. Among them are the aforementioned Storia dell'arte cristiana nei primi otto secoli della chiesa (6 vols. Prato 1872—81); Dissertazioni archeologiche di vario argomento (2 vols., Rome 1864-65); Le monete dell'Italia antica, Raccolta generale (Rome, 1885).