Panofka, Theodore

Theodor Sigismund Panofka ( German: Theodor Sigismund Panofka ; February 25, 1800 , Breslau - June 20, 1858 , Berlin ) - German archaeologist, philologist and art historian, teacher, scientific writer. The actual founder of a scientific study of ancient Greek ceramics and the German Archaeological Institute . Brother of violinist Heinrich Panofka .

Since 1819 he studied classical philology at the University of Berlin . In 1823 he went to Rome and a year later - together with the artist Otto Magnus von Stackelberg , writer-art historian and collector August Kestner and the researcher of ancient art Eduard Gerhard - he founded the Hyperborean-Roman society ( it’s simply called Hyperboreisch-römische Gesellschaft) ), usually called "Hyperboreans": an informal association of North European scholars who studied in Rome the ruins of the period of antiquity. In Rome, Panofka attracted the attention of the Duke de Blacas , the French ambassador to the Papal region and the collector of antiquities, who became his patron and with whom Panofka remained until the duke returned to Paris in 1828. When the Hyperboreans were transformed into the Archaeological Institute in Rome in 1829, Panofka became secretary of a new organization based in Paris. Upon arrival in Rome, he spent a total of four years traveling in Italy and Sicily.

Panofka went to southern Italy, where he took part in the collection of ancient artifacts for the National Museum in Naples (including personally supervised the excavations in Nola), in particular, by cataloging vases and sculptures of the museum. Upon his return to Paris, he published a scientific work on ancient Greek vases under the heading "Search for the true names of Greek vases" ( French Recherches sur les véritables noms des vases grecs ). In 1836 he was elected to the academicians of the Berlin Academy and went to work at the Royal Museum in Berlin, where, thanks to his knowledge of the ancient Greek vases, he was eventually appointed curator of the vases collection. Despite the growing deafness, Panofke was able to publish in 1842 the work “Terracotta of the Royal Museum in Berlin” ( German: Terracotten des königlichen Museums zu Berlin ) and a philological study of the African roots of the Delphic cult in 1849. He became a professor of archeology at the University of Berlin in 1844 and in 1856, two years before his death, he became the curator of the museum's vase collection. He died in Berlin at the age of 58.

Modern science considers the works of Panofka extremely subjective and not free from numerous errors, but containing some anticipatory time for insight, and in historical terms laying the foundations of a number of important research areas.