New content available via Europeana: Ippolito Rosellini and ancient Egypt


The Central Institute for the Union Catalogue of Italian Libraries and Bibliographic Information (ICCU), as aggregator of digital resources through Internet Culturale, made available more than 1000 digital objects via Europeana in the frame of Europeana Archaeology project.

It deals with precious drawings realised with different techniques (pencil, watercolour, tempera) coming from the collections of the Biblioteca Universitaria di Pisa and assigned to it by the will of the famous archaeologist Ippolito Rosellini.
Ippolito Rosellini (Pisa 1800 – 1843) was both the director of the library of the University of Pisa and Professor of philology, literature and eastern archaeology.

Together with Jean Louis Champollion was realized the archaeological expedition in Egypt that lasted 16 months (this initiative was supported by the grand duke of Tuscany Leopoldo II and by the king of France Carlo X). During this mission a lot of iconographic resources have been realised by some artists involved in this activity in order to reproduce the bas reliefs and the paintings that adorned temples and burials explored during the enterprise.

Sculptor at work by Ippolito Rosellini, content provider Biblioteca Universitaria di Pisa, CC BY-NC-SA (4.0 version) Link to the resource in Europeana