Larissa Bonfante (March 27, 1931, Naples, Italy – August 23, 2019, New York City, New York) was an Italian-American classicist, Professor of Classics emerita at New York University and an authority on Etruscan language and culture.

Biography

Bonfante was born in Naples, the daughter of professor Giuliano Bonfante. She grew up in Princeton, NJ. Bonfante would go on to study fine arts and classics at Barnard College, earning her B.A. in 1954; she completed her M.A. in classics from the University of Cincinnati in 1957 and her Ph.D. in art history and archaeology at Columbia University in 1966. She studied at Columbia with Otto Brendel. Bonfante received the Gold Medal Award for Distinguished Archaeological Achievement in 2007 from the Archaeological Institute of America. She was a founding member of the American section of the Istituto Nazionale di Studi Etruschi ed Italici. She edited the periodical publication Etruscan News that reported on the activities of the American section. In 2009 Bonfante was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society.

Endowed lectureship

The Archaeological Institute of America created an endowment fund to raise monies to support a lecture in Bonfante's honor as part of its lecture program. The inaugural named lecture was delivered by Dr. Jean MacIntosh Turfa on March 21, 2021, for the Staten Island (NY) society of the AIA.

Selected publications

Necrology