Erased pages: Cristoforo Buondelmonti, Cyriacus of Ancona and the Humanist Recovery of the Aegean
Presented By
American School of Classical Studies at Athens & Gennadius Library
Speaker(s)
George Tolias
Director of Studies, École Pratique des Hautes Études
Location
Cotsen Hall, Hybrid Lecture, Anapiron Polemou 9, Kolonaki 10676About the Event
From the pioneering studies of Roberto Weiss to the present day, the names of Ciriaco d'Ancona and Cristoforo Buondelmonti are inextricably associated both with each other and with the genesis of Greek archaeology. The two self-taught humanists spent part of their lives on the coasts and islands of the Aegean, and were each interested in the ancient past, though in a different way. Brilliant the one and obscure the other, they both sought to capture the historical dynamics through the novel humanistic disciplines, epigraphy and art history for the former, geography and cartography for the latter. The aim of this talk is, through a brief overview of the work and motivations of each, to highlight the similarities and differences between them, and above all to examine them as products and contributors to the humanist interest in the historical space of the Aegean at the end of the Latin rule.
About the speaker
George Tolias studied at the University of Sorbonne (Paris III and Paris IV) from where he received a Doctorate in 1993. From 1995 he worked at the Institute for Neohellenic Research, NHRF, where he was in charge of the research program entitled “Geographical Culture and History of Cartography”, and since 2014 at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, where he is in charge of the seminar “Representations of Space, Late Medieval and Early Modern Period.”
Initially focusing on the formation of the cultural and territorial identity of modern Greece, his work has evolved towards an exploration of spatial representations, seen as the product of transfers between knowledge and techniques on the one hand, and between ideological, political and cultural priorities, on the other. He has published books and articles on the history of perceptions of Greek space, on the history of archaeology, the Greek Studies, the history of cartography, travel literature and geography.
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