Giuseppe Fede


Giuseppe Fede was an Italian nobleman, collector and archaeologist of the 18th century. As early as 1724 he started to buy up parcels of land on the site of Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli and excavate on them. Like his father, he was a collector-excavator who retained some of the sculptures he excavated for himself whilst releasing others onto the antiquarian market.
He had at least four of the sculptures he found restored by Bartolomeo Cavaceppi before 1768, and Cavaceppi included sculptures found by Fede in his Raccolta.

Primary sources

  • Winckelmann, Briefe, Numbers 150, 486, I, 455
  • Johann Bernoulli, Sammlung kurzer Reisebeschreibungen und anderer zur Erweiterung der Länder-und Menschenkenntnis dienender Nachrichten, II, 607
  • Carlo Pietrangeli, Scavi e scoperte di antichita sotto il pontificato di Pio VI, plates 146-148

    Secondary sources

  • Georg Lippold, Die Skulpturen des Vatikanischen Museums, III, 2, pages 107-108, 558
  • Friedrich Noack, Das Deutschtum in Rom seit dem Ausgang des Mittelalters II, 160, 202
  • Seymour Howard, 'An Antiquarian Handlist and Beginnings of the Pio-Clementino', Eighteenth-Century Studies, 1973, p54
  • Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900 1981
Category:1777 deaths
Category:Italian antiquarians
Category:Italian archaeologists
Category:Italian art collectors
Category:Counts in Italy
Category:Year of birth unknown