Carlo Anti

Born in Villafranca di Verona, Anti studied at Verona and Bologna, where he graduated with Gherardo Ghirardini. Thereafter he transferred to Rome to study at the Italian Archaeological School and then to be an inspector at the Pigorini National Museum of Prehistory and Ethnography. During his years studying in Rome he married his wife, Clelia Vinciguerra, also a cum at the school. Among his teachers at this time, he remembered Emanuel Löwy, a great Austrian archaeologist active in Rome during those years, who supported him in developing his interest in the history of artists, already stimulated by his contact with the school of Monaco and opposed to the Art history founded by Johann Joachim Winckelmann.

In 1914 he travelled for the first time to Greece, where he had the opportunity to meet Italian and foreign scholars, including Luigi Pernier, Biagio Pace, Wilhelm Dörpfeld and Panagiotis Kavvadias.^[1]

In 1921 he was invited to Anatolia by Amedeo Maiuri and Roberto Paribeni with the task of exploring Lycia and Pamphylia, as part of vague Italian attempts to establish a presence in Turkey.^[2]

From 1922, his archaeological and scholarly activities were linked to the University of Padua. In the same year, he curated the exhibition of 33 African objects at the Pigorini Museum and the Ethnographic Museum of Florence for the 13th Venetian Biennial.^[3]

From 1925 to 1936 he performed the role of assistance to Luigi Pernier at the excavations of the Sanctuary of Apollo at Cyrene. At Cyrene, Anti was entrusted with the study of the material, while Pernier was responsible for the excavation.^[4] In 1930, the excavation of Umm el Breighat (ancient Tebtunis), in the Egyptian desert, followed.^[5]

During the period of his rectorate (1932-1938), Carlo Anti's activities in the archaeological field became fewer, but by 1943 he had returned to dedicating himself to study. Anti was subject to a purge and was removed from the university, but in the following year he returned to teaching, which he continued to do until he retired in 1959.

Already a professor at the University of Padua, he was named Magnifico rettore (Rector) in 1932.

During the eleven years in which he held the position of Rector at the University of Padua, Anti dedicated himself to the renovation and modernisation of the university buildings and its research facilities, thanks to the investment of 45 million lire in 1932, to which a further 12 million was added in 1938, giving the academy "an organic and unified built environment." New buildings incorporated among the old ones, included the student house "Prince of Piedmont" (1935) and the Palazzo Liviano (1940), which is the location of the Faculty of Literature and Philosophy to this day.^[6] Carlo Anti's interest in the history and origins of the institution caused him to found a Library of the Rectorate as well.^[7]

He was replaced in the position of rector by Concetto Marchesi, in light of the changing political conditions in Italy. Although he was a political adversary of him, Marchesi did not fail to stress the importance of the scholarly work of Carlo Anti, regretting that he was for a time distracted by the obligations of administration, on the occasion of the award of the national prize of the Lincei for his volume, Teatri greci arcaici, in 1949.^[8]