Raffaele Garrucci

Who was Raffaele Garrucci?

Raffaele Garrucci was a historian of Christian art. He belonged to a wealthy family, entered the Society of Jesus at the age of fifteen and was professed on 19 March 1853. He devoted himself to the study of the Church Fathers, also to Pagan and Christian antiquities; both he and the celebrated Giovanni Battista de Rossi became the principal disciples of Father Marchi. On his many journeys through Italy, France, Germany, and Spain, he collected much material for his archaeological publications.

In 1854 he wrote for Father Charles Cahier's Mélanges d'Archéologie, a study on Phrygian syncretism. Soon after he edited the notes of Jean L' Heureux on the Catacombs of Rome; later an essay on the gilded glasses of the catacombs, and another on the Jewish cemetery at the Vigna Randanini. In 1872 he began the publication of a monumental history of early Christian antiquities, entitled Storia dell'arte cristiana. It was destined to include all works of sculpture, painting, and the minor and industrial arts, during the first eight centuries of the Christian Era. It is, in fact, a general history of early Christian art, and contains five hundred finely engraved plates and explanatory text. 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.