Giuseppe Alessandro Furietti

Who was Giuseppe Alessandro Furietti?

Giuseppe Alessandro Furietti was a Roman Catholic cardinal, an antiquarian and philologist, and a collector of antiquities whose ambitious excavations at the site of Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli rewarded him with the Furietti Centaurs and other Roman sculpture.

Furietti was born at Bergamo, the son of Giovanni Marco Sonzogni Furietti, noble, of a local branch of the Sonzogni. He was educated at the Almo Collegio Borromeo, Pavia, then at the University of Pavia, where he received his doctorate in canon and civil law. In spite of his distinguished service to the Apostolic Camera, the cardinal's hat was withheld from him by Pope Benedict XIV, although Furietti dedicated to him his book on mosaics, partly in pique for Furietti's refusal to part with the famous marble centaurs for the Museo Capitolino, which had opened in 1734. Furietti was eventually created cardinal priest, by Clement XIII in the consistory of 24 September 1759.

For a sum, Furietti obtained rights to excavate the section of Hadrian's Villa that belonged to Simplicio Bulgarini.