PIETRO ERCOLE VISCONTI (1802-1880) and CARLO LODOVICO VISCONTI (1818-1894)
Pietro Ercole Visconti (born in Rome in 1802; died in Rome in 1880), son of Alessandro Visconti (1757-1835) and grandson of Giovanni Battista Visconti, became a full member of the Accademia di Archeologia in 1822, a year later its honorary graduate, and from 1830 its permanent secretary. For this institution he delivered his first works on early Christian inscriptions and Roman finds in 1823. In 1825 he carried out an unsuccessful excavation on the site of the Circus of Maxentius owned by the Torlonia family on Via Appia. In 1830 he excavated in Privernum. During the excavations in Caere, the modern Cerveteri, initiated by Prince Alessandro Torlonia in 1834, he uncovered the necropolis on Monte Abatone in 1835 and discovered the Tomba Torlonia, named after his principal, an important grave of the 4th century BC. In 1836 he published the results of these excavations. In the same year he succeeded Carlo Fea as Commissario delle Antichità and was responsible for the antiquities of the Papal State. He held the office until the dissolution of the Papal State in 1870, and was also president of the Museo Capitolino.
In 1852 he was a founding member of the Commissione di Archeologia Sacra. From 1855 he led on behalf of Pius IX systematic excavations in Ostia, whereby he was supported from 1859 by his nephew Carlo Lodovico Visconti (1818-1894); the finds came to the Lateranense Museum. From 1868 to 1870 he excavated on behalf of the Pope in the area of the Roman Emporium between Ponte Testaccio and Ponte Sublicio on Monte Testaccio. The excavation was very productive and produced numerous pieces of marble. To commemorate this excavation, Pope Pius IX erected a fountain made of a Roman sarcophagus and added an inscription celebrating the fruits of the excavation. Finally, in 1869/1870, he carried out archaeological investigations in the papal possessions on the Palatine. For his excavations Pietro Ercole Visconti was raised to the baron under Pius IX.
From 1856 Pietro Ercole Visconti was professor of archeology, in the academic year 1870/71, for archeology and ancient history at the University of La Sapienza. Because he refused to take an oath on the newly established Kingdom of Italy, he lost his chair. He then taught Roman topography at the Académie de France à Rome in succession to Antonio Nibby, who died in 1839. After the end of the Papal State and the resignation of all his offices, Pietro Ercole Visconti worked for the archaeological commission of the city of Rome from 1872. In 1876 he was a founding member of the Società Romana di Storia Patria. In the same year he published the first catalog of the Museo Torlonia.
Pietro Ercole Visconti, who himself wrote poems and was famous for his epigrams, also devoted himself to folk art and collected folk songs from the papal province of Campagna e Marittima, which he published in 1830. On the occasion of the wedding of Alessandro Torlonia with Teresa Colonna-Doria on July 16, 1840, he published the poems of Vittoria Colonna in a critical edition, including a biography as a private print. The print also contains sonnets and madrigals by various authors to praise the poet. His history of the families of the Papal State remained unfinished.
Pietro Ercole Visconti was a member of numerous Roman and international academies and institutes, such as the Accademia dell'Arcadia, the Accademia di San Luca and the Accademia del Pantheon. He was a director of the German Archaeological Institute and a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. He was a member of the Legion of Honor (1841), holder of the Russian Order of St. Stanislaus (1846), the Prussian Red Eagle Order (1860) and the Dutch Order of the Oak Crown (1871).
Carlo Lodovico Visconti (also Carlo Ludovico Visconti; born in Rome in 1818; died in Rom on June 19, 1894) was an Italian archaeologist. Carlo Lodovico Visconti, son of Felice Visconti and nephew of Pietro Ercole Visconti, was the last member of the Roman archaeological dynasty of the Visconti, which began with Giovanni Battista Visconti, in 1768 successor to Johann Joachim Winckelmann in the office of the Commissario delle Antichità, and which dominated over four generations the archeology and administration of antiquities in the Papal States.
Carlo Lodovico Visconti took part in the excavations in Rome and the provinces of the Papal State from 1855, from 1859 he assisted his uncle Pietro Ercole with his systematic excavations in Ostia initiated by Pius IX, in addition to his work for the Commissariato delle Antichità, and also supported him in his work as a professor of archeology at the then papal university of Rome. In 1883 he became director of the Museo Torlonia and, after the death of Ignazio Jacometti (1819-1883) in 1884, took over responsibility for the Vatican collections and antiquities as Direttore dei Musei e delle Gallerie Pontificie and Commissario delle Antichità pei Musei Pontifici.
In addition to his independent excavations in Ostia, where he found his most important pupil in the young Rodolfo Lanciani, he discovered the domus Cilonis, the city villa of the consul and prefect Lucius Fabius Cilo from the late 2nd century, later integrated into the church of Santa Balbina all'Aventino. He dug at the Sanctuary of the Arval Brothers on Via Magliana and uncovered the Excubitorium - a post of the city firefighters known as vigiles - in region XIV on Monte de'Fiori near San Crisogono.
Carlo Lodovico Visconti was permanent secretary of the Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia and secretary of the Pontifical Academy of Fine Arts and Literature. He was a member of the Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma since its foundation in 1872 and editor of the first 21 volumes of the Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma, for which he contributed numerous articles.
Source: Wikipedia.