Luigi Pernier

Career

Pernier came from a wealthy family—his father Giuseppe was a rich landowner of French descent and his mother Agnese Romanini belonged to an aristocratic family. He attended the Liceo Ginnasio "Ennio Quirino Visconti" before graduating in Letters at the University of Rome in 1897, with Rodolfo Lanciani as his supervisor. He specialised at the Scuola di Archeologia di Roma, gaining a diploma in 1901, after spending periods studying in Crete at the Missione Archeologica Italiana under Federico Halbherr.

From 1902 to 1916 he was inspector of 'Museums, Galleries and Excavations of Antiquities' in Florence and carried out research at several central Italian sites; at the same time he joined the Italian Mission to Crete, directing its operations from 1906 to 1909 in place of Halbherr while the latter was detained in Italy. It was at this time that Pernier was involved in the discovery of the Phaistos Disc. In 1904 he married Tonina Falchi, daughter of Isidoro Falchi, who had discovered the site of Vetulonia. From 1909 he was the first director of the newly established Italian Archaeological School of Athens.

In 1914 he was made director of the Archaeological Museum of Florence, giving up his directorship of the Athens school. In 1916 he was appointed superintendent of excavations and archaeological musueums of Etruria, a position he held until 1922, when he became professor of archaeology and ancient art history at the University of Florence. Pernier spent long periods abroad during this time, especially in the summer, on Crete or in Cyrene. On Crete, from 1928 to 1929, he completed the excavations on the palace at Phaistos before becoming director of the Italian Archaeological Mission on Halbherr's death in 1930.

At Cyrene, from 1925 to 1936, Pernier carried out ten excavation campaigns as part of the Italian Archaeological Mission and (with Carlo Anti) led the excavations on the Sanctuary of Apollo. These duties kept him on the move so much that he died abroad, on Rhodes, where he was leading a course organised by the Società Dante Alighieri.

Integrity

In summer 2008 Jerome Eisenberg, described by The Times as "a specialist in faked ancient art", accused Pernier of having forged his best known find, the Disc of Phaistos. A symposium was convoked to discuss the Disc in autumn 2008. Eisenberg argues that the disc can be dated by a thermoluminescence test, but in 2009 the Greek curators would not permit the disc to be examined. The authenticity of the Phaistos disc is supported by multiple discoveries made after the disc was excavated in 1908. A sealing found in 1955 shows the only known parallel to sign 21 (the “comb”) of the Phaistos disc. At the symposium, Eisenberg's hypothesis was therefore dismissed.

Works