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Peter Oluf Brondsted

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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PETER OLUF BRONDSTED (1780-1842), Danish archaeologist and traveller, was born at Fruering in Jutland on the 17th of November 1780. After studying at the university of Copenhagen he visited Paris in 1806 with his friend Georg Koes. After remaining there two years, they went together to Italy. Both were zealously attached to the study of antiquities; and congeniality of tastes and pursuits induced them, in 1810, to join an expedition to Greece, where they excavated the temples of Zeus in Aegina and of Apollo at Bassae in Arcadia. After three years of active researches in Greece, Brbndsted returned to Copenhagen, where, as a reward for his labours, he was appointed professor of Greek in the university. He then began to arrange and prepare for publication the vast materials he had collected during his travels; but finding that Copenhagen did not afford him the desired facilities, he exchanged his professorship for the office of Danish envoy at the papal court in 1818, and took up his abode at Rome. In 1820 and 1821 he visited Sicily and the Ionian Isles to collect additional materials for his great work. In 1826 he went to London, chiefly with a view of studying the Elgin marbles and other remains of antiquity in the British Museum, and became acquainted with the principal archaeologists of England. From1828-1832he resided in Paris, to superintend the publication of his Travels, and then returned to Copenhagen on being appointed director of the museum of antiquities and the collection of coins and medals. In 1842 he became rector of the university; but a fall from his horse caused his death on the 26th of June. His principal work was the Travels and Archaeological Researches in Greece (in German and French, 1826-1830), of which only two volumes were published, dealing with the island of Ceos and the metopes of the Parthenon.