Britain and Ireland, Visconti was among the scholars asked to offer statements of their cultural value; his memoir was translated into English and published. Visconti was succeeded as curator of antiquities at the Louvre by Charles Othon Frédéric Jean-Baptiste de Clarac. Visconti was firmly grounded in the antiquarian traditions of connoisseurship. He rated associative values high in portraits and assumed portraits of the great (both philosophers and emperors). He concentrated on disentangling the iconography of the sculptures and reliefs he was describing. Visconti is also a liminal figure at the beginnings of modern art history, as when, Haskell and Penny note, he concedes that he has perhaps overestimated the beauty of a statue in his delight at recognising in it the portrait of Phocion. His sense of loyalty to the sculpture he had grown up with induced him to see in the best of these copies of classical Greek and Hellenistic originals, such as the Apollo Belvedere and Laocoön and His Sons, "perfected imitations" made for Roman collectors of taste, and that the traditions of ancient sculpture were a cumulative history of improvements, rather as Virgil, it was felt, refined and improved upon Homer. In 1818 after his death a medal was struck in his honour. This medal is part of a series in order to commemorate illustrious French men illustrating his renown at the time. Works Museo Pio-Clementino (Milano, 1820) Sculture del Palazzo della Villa Borghese della Pinciana brevemente desritte 2 vols. 1796. Monumenti Scelti Borghesiani Monumenti Gabini Iconographia greca (as Iconographie grècque, Paris 1808) First volume of Iconographie romaine (4 vol., 1817–26), finished by Antoine Mongez These five works were reissued, with emendations, in Milan, 1827–37, some under the title Opere varie italiane e francesi edited by Giovanni Labus. Further reading G. Calcani, 'Ennio Quirino Visconti tra antiquaria e archeologia', in Antonio Canova: la cultura figurativa e letteraria dei grandi centri italiani (2005. Bassano del Grappa), p. 103-113 Notes External links Columbia Encyclopedia article 1751 births 1818 deaths 18th-century antiquarians 19th-century antiquarians 18th-century Italian writers 18th-century Italian male writers 19th-century Italian writers 19th-century Italian male writers 18th-century translators Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery Conservator-restorers Italian art curators Italian art historians Italian classical scholars Italian expatriates in France Italian people of the French Revolutionary Wars Italian translators Members of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres People associated with the Louvre People of the Papal States Pope Pius VI Rome