University
This exhibit documents the figure of Fabio Frassetto (1876-1953), anthropologist and professor at the University of Bologna, who dedicated a considerable part of his academic life to studying the bones of the “great Italians”, with Dante in particular. Many of his study materials and papers are still preserved today at the University of Bologna. Dante’s centennial was thus seen as an opportunity to display objects hitherto largely known only to few experts. Frassetto’s approach, typical of the early decades of the 20th Century, must be viewed in a cultural climate marked by nationalism and obsession with identity. Ancestral populations, as forefathers to the modern nations, had to be studied on the presumption of indisputable biological and moral characteristics, from which it was possible to distinguish different “races” or “lineages”. Frassetto however, was not only interested in the so-called standard “Mediterranean race”, but also in the exceptions, those sublime creatives, who characterized the “genius” of the Italians. Hence his spasmodic, vain pursuit, of unique human remains.
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The Genius within the Bones. Fabio Frassetto: an anthropologist in pursuit of Dante's Italianess
Museo di Palazzo Poggi, Via Zamboni 33
40126 Bologna
Telephone: +390512099610
Email: sma.museizamboni33@unibo.it
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