Lidio Cipriani

Lidio Cipriani
File:Lidio Cipriani, Calchi facciali - Imago Animi 2018.jpg Facial plaster casts made by Lidio Cipriani (1927-1930). The original white plaster casts were then painted according to the color of the skin of the subject, using a color scale.
Born	(1892-03-17)17 March 1892 Bagno a Ripoli, Kingdom of Italy
Died	Florence, Italian Republic
Occupation	Anthropologist, university teacher and explorer
Board member of	Museo nazionale di antropologia ed etnologia di Firenze
Awards	International Broca Prize (1924) Knight grand cross of the Colonial Order of the Star of Italy (1935)
Academic background
Alma mater	University of Florence
School or tradition	Anthropometric school
Academic work
Discipline	Anthropologist, ethnologist
Sub discipline	Physical anthropologist
Institutions	University of Florence
Notable works	The Andaman Islanders

Lidio Cipriani (17 March 1892 – 8 October 1962) was an Italian anthropologist, university teacher, director of the Florence Museum of Anthropology and explorer.

Biography

Early life and education

Lidio Cipriani was born in Bagno a Ripoli. His father Cesare was a primary school teacher. He trained at the San Carlo technical school in Florence, taking his licence in 1907, and then attended the Capponi boys' normal school in the same city, where he graduated as an elementary school teacher: he then taught in Fucecchio, Galluzzo and Florence.

Cipriani served as a volunteer (1915–1919) in the First World War and in 1920 obtained a diploma for graduates of normal schools. He enrolled at university and graduated in 1923 in natural sciences with a thesis on anthropology. In 1924 he furthered his studies in Paris and in 1925 in London.

Career overview

From February 1923, he was a voluntary assistant at the National Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology in Florence and in 1926 he was awarded a professorship in anthropology.

It was from the following year that his anthropological missions to Africa and Asia began: in November 1927 he went to the territories of present-day South Africa; there he collected ethnographic materials, took 2000 photographs and made the first facial models on a sample of 76 Zulus. In September 1927, he attended the XXIII International Congress of Americanists in New York, as chairman of the physical anthropology section, and then set off on another journey that lasted until 1930, in which he visited Jeddah, Djibouti, Aden, the Hafun Peninsula, Mogadishu, Kismayo, Mombasa, Dar-es-Salam, Beira, stopping particularly in Northern Rhodesia, where he carried out physical anthropological studies on the Baila people.

To make the face masks, Cipriani, in most cases, modelled the plaster directly onto the face of the chosen person, thus obtaining an impression of the face. From this negative, casts were made; the skin colour was then obtained using the categories from Von Luchan's skin colour table. The purpose of the casts was to classify the different human races, testifying to their differences and similarities.

Between May 1930 and January 1931, he took part in an expedition to the Congo in the territories of the Bushmen and Pygmies. He went to Africa again between September and December 1932, taking part in the first scientific research mission in the Fezzan, in southern Libya, which aimed to initiate anthropological and ethnographic investigations on the Tuareg, the Toubou, the Dauada, and to deepen knowledge on Saharan prehistory. After a second expedition to the same territories between February and March 1933, he made his first trip to south-west Asia between late 1934 and spring 1935, staying mainly in southern India and the island of Ceylon. In view of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, he wanted to participate in the war as a volunteer, but was discharged in 1936, receiving in the meantime the title of Knight of the Colonial Order of the Star for his scientific merits. In January 1937, he took part in the first mission sent by the Royal Academy to Italian East Africa, under the leadership of Giotto Dainelli: his interest was mainly focused on the populations of the Lake Tana basin (Amhara, Falascha), as well as the Baria, Kunama and Beni-Amer. During a second mission to Italian East Africa, which took place between December 1938 and April 1939, he was mainly interested in the Galla and Sidama populations.

Cipriani's positions of biological racism were in fact one of the ideological foundations of the declaration Fascism and the Problems of Race: the declaration argued for the existence of a pure Italian lineage of Aryan origin and the non-assimilability to it of Semites, Hamites, mulattos and Negroes, as belonging to a non-European race. Cipriani was one of the ten signatories of the manifesto and a leading representative of the original nucleus of its drafters — together with Guido Landra, Leone Franzì, Lino Businco and Marcello Ricci — who had the full approval of Benito Mussolini. After the publication of the manifesto, Cipriani became a member of the editorial board of the La Difesa della Razza, directed by Telesio Interlandi, and of the advisory board of the Biblioteca razziale Italia (Race Library Italy), an editorial series linked to the same magazine. He was also a member of the Race Office of the Ministry of Popular Culture, under the direction of Landra until February 1939.

Cipriani fell from grace in June 1940, when he was officially accused of having sold masks and other objects he had collected during his missions for personal purposes. He was thus removed from his position as director of the Institute of Anthropology at the Royal University of Florence and was stripped of his teaching post in anthropology at the same university. According to the reconstruction provided by Francesco Cassata, the real cause of his removal, like that of the other early inspirers of the Manifesto of Race, was the internal struggle between the various currents of Italian racialism, with the clear prevalence of the nationalist current — oriented towards a rediscovery of Romanity and the concept of lineage — to the detriment of biological racism. In this polemic, Cipriani's 1936 position on Jews was also instrumentally taken up again, when he had stated that Israelites were positively assimilated to Mediterraneans and judged anti-Judaism incompatible with "Latin Thought".

Wartime and later life

After his professional marginalisation, Cipriani married in October 1940 to Countess Ada Maria Marezzi. In May 1942 he was recalled to army service with the rank of major and sent to the island of Crete at the headquarters of the Siena Division, where he was able to carry out numerous anthropological researches and collect thousands of anthropometric data in all areas of the island. On 8 September 1943, he was taken prisoner by the Germans, who used him, still on Crete, as an interpreter until October 1944, when he was taken to Verona.

In June 1945, he was arrested again in Florence for having signed the Manifesto of Race. He was taken to Milan's San Vittore Prison and released after seven months. In 1949, Cipriani received an invitation from the Indian government to take part in an exploration expedition to the Andaman Islands where he remained until 1954, returning to Europe from time to time to participate in international scientific congresses: as an influential scientist, he travelled to England, Poland, Switzerland, France and Czechoslovakia, where he was awarded an honour for his scientific merits. He died in Florence at 70 years of age.

Works

• Ricerche sulla rotula umana (1922)
• In Africa dal Capo al Cairo (1932; with an introductory letter by Nicola Vecchelli)
• Considerazioni sopra il passato e l’avvenire delle popolazioni africane (1932)
• Gli Zulu : da un viaggio dell'autore (1932)
• Il Congo : da un viaggio dell'autore (1932)
• Le antiche rovine e miniere della Rhodesia (1932)
• Un assurdo etnico: l'impero etiopico (1935; with an introduction by Corrado Zoli)
• A Ceylon alla ricerca degli ultimi Vedda (1936)
• I Baria e Cunama (1937; with Pini Accurti Fiamma)
• Sul tipo umano di Neandherthal (1937; with Fabiani Wanda)
• Arabi dello Yemen e dell'Higiaz (1939)
• 5: Ricerche antropologiche sulle genti (1940)
• Abitazioni indigene dell'Africa orientale italiana (1940)
• I bantu occidentali, i pigmei del bacino del Congo, i bantu orientali e meridionali, i boscimani san, gli ottentotti koi-koin (1941)
• I negri del Sudan occidentale e dell'Alta Guinea (1941)
• Creta e l'origine mediterranea della civiltà (1943)
• "I negri del Sudan centrale ed orientale." In: Renato Biasutti, Le razze e i popoli della terra, Vol. 2 (1941)
• Vita ignorata degli uomini e degli animali (1952)

Translated into English

• The Andaman Islanders. By Lidio Cipriani. Edited and translated by D. Taylor Cox, assisted by Linda Cole. New York: Frederick A. Praeger. 1966.

References

Alciati, G.; M. Capitanio & M. Tommaseo Ponzetta (1996). "Il Museo di Antropologia ed Etnografia." In: Carlo Gregolin, ed., Università di Padova: I musei, le collezioni scientifiche e le sezioni antiche delle biblioteche. Treviso: Grafiche Zoppelli, pp. 89–99.

Bonavita, Riccardo; Gianluca Gabrielli & Rossella Ropa (2005). L'offesa della razza. Razzismo e antisemitismo dell'Italia fascista. Bologna: Pàtron, pp. 94–107.

Bonmassar, Michele (2019). Diritto e razza: gli italiani in Africa. Roma: Armando.

Cogni, Giulio (1962). "Lidio Cipriani," Uomini e Idee, Vol. IV, pp. 253–56.

Cassata, Francesco (2008). "La difesa della razza". Politica, ideologia e immagine del razzismo fascista. Torino: Einaudi.

Chiarelli, Cosimo; Brunetto Chiarelli & Paolo Chiozzi (1996). Etnie. La scuola antropologica fiorentina e la fotografia fra Otto e Novecento. Firenze: Alinari.

Chiozzi, Paolo (1994). "Autoritratto del razzismo: le fotografie antropologiche di Lidio Cipriani." In: La menzogna della razza. Documenti e immagini del razzismo e dell'antisemitismo fascista. Bologna: Grafis, pp. 91–94.

Dore, Gianni (1981). "Antropologia e colonialismo nell'epoca fascista: il razzismo biologico di Lidio Cipriani", Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia di Cagliari, Vol. II (XXXIV), pp. 285–313.

Dore, Gianni (1996). Antropologia e colonialismo italiano. Miscellanea. Bologna.

Maiocchi, Roberto (1999). Scienza italiana e razzismo fascista. Firenze: La Nuova Italia.

Moggi Cecchi, Jacopo (1990). "La vita e l'opera scientifica di Lidio Cipriani," AFT. Rivista di Storia e Fotografia, Vol. XI, pp. 11–18.

Moggi Cecchi, Jacopo (2014). Il Museo di Storia Naturale dell'Università degli studi di Firenze. Firenze: Firenze University Press.

Paris, Orlando (2017). Il discorso scientifico e la costruzione dell'«altro». Il razzismo biologico di Lidio Cipriani. Pisa: Pacini.

Puccini, Sandra (1988). "Elio Modigliani. Esplorare, osservare, raccogliere nell'esperienza di un etnografo dell'Ottocento," La Ricerca Folklorica, No. 18, pp. 25–40.

Surdich, Francesco (1981). "Cipriani, Lidio." In: Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Vol. 25. Roma: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana.

Tacchetto, E. (2018). "Lidio Cipriani: l'antropologo al servizio del Fascismo." In: Luca Bezzi, Nicola Carrara & Marcello Nebl, eds., Imago Animi, volti dal passato. Comune di Cles: Cles, pp. 25–27.

Volpone, Alessandro; Giovanni Destro Bisol (2011). Se vi son donne di genio. Appunti di viaggio nell'Antropologia dall'Unità d'Italia a oggi. Roma: Casa Editrice Università La Sapienza.

External links

• Works by Lidio Cipriani at JSTOR
• Works by Lidio Cipriani at Open Library