Customer Reviews

To Wake the Dead: A Renaissance Merchant and the Birth of Archaeology

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This book is a wonderful journey into the past. Your tour guide is the enthusiastic, romantic Cyriacus of Ancona, a 15th century Italian port master that developed a passion for ancient Greek and Roman architecture. His detailed record-keeping and sharp mind earned the trust of the local merchants and authorities. He adroitly used that trust to gain passage and access to ancient sites all over the Eastern Mediterranean. He was a careful, meticulous chronicler of all he surveyed. Many of the sites he visited have since been destroyed by war, earthquake or pilferage. His detailed renderings and descriptions are often the only surviving record of these ancient treasures.

Belozerskaya offers us a ticket to ride along with Cyriacus on his many adventures. Her outstanding research and engaging writing style combine to make this a fun book about the amazing, mostly forgotten "father of archaeology." The book does lack one thing: a reference map.

"To Wake the Dead," a fascinating tale of a little-known Italian renaissance merchant who somehow made himself into the world's first archaeologist, is the latest release from Moscow-born Marina Belozerskaya. She has previously penned The Medici Giraffe;Luxury Arts of the Renaissance; Ancient Greece: Art, Architecture, and History (Getty Trust Publications: J. Paul Getty Museum), (with Kenneth Lapatin); and The Arts of Tuscany: From the Etruscans to Ferragamo. And she has been an award-winning teacher at Harvard, Tufts, and Boston Universities.

The author here gives us the life of Cyriacus Pizzecolli, who was born at Ancona, in southern Italy. In autumn 1421, young Cyriacus, apprenticed to a merchant from a young age, who was himself to become a most successful merchant, looked up from his business at the port of Ancona, and noticed something the users of the port had long ignored, a Roman triumphal arch rising high overhead. The young merchant would do some research, and realize that it was dedicated to the Roman emperor Trajan. From this would develop a lifelong, extremely productive mission of finding and preserving classical monuments wherever he could: and his business as a merchant enabled - paid -- him to travel widely.

It surely is hard for us to understand now, but, at the dawn of that period of great renewal known as the Renaissance, when artists, architects, humanists and scholars were just beginning to search out, translate, and utilize ancient Greek and Roman literature, the remains of those classical periods still standing in the known world weren't just ignored. They were heavily cannibalized for newer buildings, or for lime to whitewash houses and churches, or for cannonballs. Cyriacus was virtually alone in traveling just to view relics of the past. He was the first to grasp the meaning and importance of such famous sites as the Parthenon in Athens, Greece; and the Temple of Jupiter at Cyzicus in Asia Minor. But he did better than that: his training as a merchant and accountant enabled him to examine the monuments carefully; to draw, and to describe them, and he is often the only source able to tell us how some of the greatest of them once looked. He taught himself Greek and Roman the better to puzzle out what the inscriptions on them were saying - there were no guidebooks in existence; and, alone among Renaissance humanist scholars, concentrated on the art and architecture of the classical period, rather than just the literature. Though he paid plenty of attention to books too, importing them into Italy for those scholars, and, of course, reading them himself. As a result of all this, he became an intimate of famous scholars, popes; of the Medici Grand Dukes of Florence, although merchants were at that time looked down upon by all these people. His drawings, inscriptions and written data inspired the leading artists of his day, such as Donatello and Raphael; and continue to inspire artists, architects, and archaeologists.

Despite the heavy load of scholarship and research Belozerskaya must have invested in this book, it's accessibly written, in lively prose, and unfailingly interesting. It also, praises be, comes with illustrations, each of them surely worth a thousand words. I myself studied Renaissance history at Cornell University, certainly an outstanding school, but I'd never heard of this hugely influential, overlooked merchant, Cyriacus. The book is compelling reading for anyone with an interest in Renaissance, or art history.

This book illuminates a period in history of which I was well aware in a general sense, but completely oblivious to its particular importance to the world of archaeology. In very animated and often gripping prose, the author recounts the birth of archaeology through the life and efforts of the Italian merchant/bookkeeper who was responsible for it: Cyriacus of Ancona. By making detailed drawings of ancient monuments, mainly throughout Greece, Italy and Asia Minor, and copying inscriptions that he found on them as well as on building stones that had been scavenged for use in new structures, he made the ancient past come alive for his intellectual contemporaries.

It would be difficult to overstate the importance of Cyriacus' work for today's archaeologists. One significant reason for this is that many of the structures that he carefully drew and documented were subsequently severely damaged and some were completely destroyed in the subsequent decades and centuries. Thus, his records became the only remaining reliable detailed descriptions available. This book also presents a snapshot of the Renaissance in the mid-fifteenth century, complete with the religious and political turmoil that played an important part in Cyriacus' life and times.

The writing style is clear, friendly, accessible, lively and immensely captivating. This is a book that can be enjoyed by anyone who likes a good adventure story; archaeology/history buffs in particular will be in for a treat.

Ozerskaya's book on Cyriacus of Ancona, a/k/a Ciriaco de Pizzicolli is an excellent biography of this largely forgotten yet important figure of Medieval Europe. The author presents a very unbiased portrait of a man who, though starting out as a humble accountant, ended up in the middle of efforts to restore unity between the Eastern and Western Churches, worked to promote a new Crusade against the Ottomans, and as the title suggests, became the father of modern archaeology. The main focus of the book is on the Cyriacus as being the first European to take a serious interest in all the ruins from classical times, and to document them and preserve them for posterity. Cyriacus searched for remnants of the classical world throughout his travels, and painstakingly recorded and analyzed them. He was also largely self-taught and performed his research largely unaided. The author is a good writer and presents the material in an easily readable way. Thankfully, she does not make the same mistake as most biographers and attempt to turn her subject into a hero. She readily critiques him, such as pointing out his lack of diplomatic skills.

I don't have any very serious criticisms of the book. From what I have gathered, there just aren't a lot of primary sources with detailed information on Cyriacus, nor did he write an autobiography. But I did find the book a bit short, and it sometimes felt that the pictures were used to fill up pages. At times it also felt like the author struggled to complete certain sections and that she was searching for ways to lengthen sections that otherwise were too short. The author mentions that later scholars, even in very recent years, have used Cyriacus' works, but overall there is a lack of a critical description of how he has been viewed and thought of in history. For example, did later rulers and scholars view him as an instigator? Is he truly universally considered the father of modern archaeology? These questions are, unfortunately, not really looked at in this book. I also agree completely with the earlier review which said that the book should have contained maps. The lack of maps detailing his travels and showing some of the events at issue in the book is rather baffling in light of the author's otherwise excellent descriptions. I also found the title of the book a bit bizarre, and think that removing "To Wake the Dead" from it would have made it much more accurate and appropriate.

Ultimately, in light of the relatively esoteric nature of the subject, the importance of Cyriacus in European history (regardless of his relative lack of fame), and the author's excellent writing and well-thought out descriptions, but with the problems I noted above, I rate this book as 4 stars without reservation. I highly recommend this book to all interested in classical studies, medieval European/Italian history, archaeology, the history of relations between the Eastern and Western Churches, and the Crusades.