Luca Salvaggio

About

I catalogue and attribute Mediterranean material for galleries and auction houses, working from photographs. A department sends what it has on a piece and receives an entry, a report or a signed opinion it can put in front of a client.

A precise entry is a findable one: collectors and institutions search by painter, by fabric, by period, by published parallel. Selling archaeology is not selling an object but a history that belongs to one piece and to no other, and the entry is what gives that history a voice.

Short bio

I trained at Palermo and Göttingen, and at the Italian Archaeological School at Athens, where I completed the postgraduate specialisation in 2021. I am a First-Tier Archaeologist certified by the Italian Ministry of Culture. I have excavated in Sicily, southern Italy and Greece, and I am the author of scholarly articles on several classes of material.

Training

2019–2021 Postgraduate specialisation in archaeology — Italian Archaeological School at Athens, Greece
2016–2018 Master of Arts, double degree — Università degli Studi di Palermo and Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Italy and Germany
2013–2016 Bachelor of Arts — Università degli Studi di Palermo, Italy

Accreditation

First-Tier Archaeologist certified by the Italian Ministry of Culture.
Licensed for preventive archaeology and for the preparation of archaeological impact assessments.

Fieldwork

Sicily Selinunte, Motya, Sciacca
Southern Italy Metapontum
Greece Lemnos, Crete

Publications

C. Rescigno, L. Salvaggio, C. Palumbo, «Ricerche metapontine. Cronaca e dati preliminari dalla campagna di scavo 2024 condotta dalla Scuola Superiore Meridionale», QuACMA 3 (2025), 407–428.
C. Rescigno, D. Diffendale, F. Nomi, L. Salvaggio, I. Trafficante, «Metaponto, Tavole Palatine. Cronaca e dati preliminari dalle campagne di scavo 2022–2023 della Scuola Superiore Meridionale», QuACMA 2 (2024), 191–220.
«Metaponto, strigili compositi in bronzo e ferro. Tecniche di fabbricazione e inquadramento cronologico», QuACMA 2 (2024), 329–341.
«Un vaso orientalizzante da Cuma con decorazione a rilievo. Tra influssi cretesi e mediazione corinzia», Polygraphia 6 (2024), 15–27.
«Collections of Greek Inscriptions. A Compendium. From the Humanism to the End of the 18th Century», Epigraphica 84 (2022), 487–498.
«Notitia Itineris Cuiusdam Per Graeciam in Lingua Italica Redacta, Cum Inscriptionum Apographis (Cod. Ambr. C 61 inf./6)», IJA 10 (2022), 1–5.
«Some considerations regarding relief pithoi in Greece between the end of the 8th and the 7th centuries BC», Polygraphia 4 (2022), 13–22.
«Osservazioni sul fregio orientalizzante da Chanià (Creta)», Mare Internum 13 (2021), 9–17.
«Un “pilastro” marmoreo iscritto dalle pendici settentrionali dell’Acropoli di Atene (IG II/III² 13210). Una nuova ricostruzione», ASAtene 98 (2020), 456–466.
«I pithoi di età orientalizzante a Creta e la tradizione artistica del Bronzo Tardo. Alcune riflessioni», Creta Antica 19 (2018).

Services

Five kinds of work

Catalogue entries

You send: Photographs — overall, profile, details of the worked surface and of any inscription — with dimensions, condition notes, and a statement of provenance.
You receive: An entry in your house format, or in mine: description, attribution where the evidence supports one, date range, and comparanda cited in full. Delivered as editable text and as PDF.
Turnaround: Max 7 working days for up to 150 short catalogue descriptions, or up to 15 attributions such as a painter identification

Attribution reports

You send: High-resolution photography, including raking light across the object, together with any technical imaging and a statement of provenance.
You receive: A signed report covering material and fabric, typology, the working of the surface, a proposed attribution to painter, workshop or hand with the argument set out, comparanda with published parallels, and a plain statement of how firm the attribution is.
Turnaround: Max 7 working days

Expert opinions

You send: Photographs and the full documentation, with the question you need answered.
You receive: A signed opinion on a specific question — date, fabric, workshop, or whether the material is consistent with the stated provenance — with the reasoning given and the limits of the opinion stated.
Turnaround: Max 2 working days

Advice before acquisition

You send: Photographs, the lot or stock number, whatever provenance the seller has stated, and the date you need an answer by.
You receive: A written assessment of what the material appears to be, what the evidence supports, what remains uncertain, and which further checks would settle it. No valuation and no view on price.
Turnaround: 48 hours for a single lot; a consignment by agreement

Signed opinions for private owners

You send: Photographs and the documentation you hold, including the provenance record.
You receive: A signed opinion stating material, date range, attribution where the evidence supports one, and condition, with the limits of what it covers set out. Available after a sale has completed as well as before it.
Turnaround: Max 7 working days

Every attribution is signed, whether it comes in a catalogue entry, a report or an opinion.

Case studies

Objects, and the questions they arrived with

Object Alabastron

Fabric Boeotian black-figure

Date 580–560 BC

Attribution Horse-Bird Group

1/3

An alabastron catalogued as Corinthian

The vase had been recorded as Corinthian, which is what it looks like: shape, fabric and the rows of dots all read that way at first sight.

That resemblance is the trap. Corinthian influence on Boeotian black-figure was at its strongest exactly when the style was introduced, and only later in the sixth century does Attic influence displace it — so a Boeotian piece of this date is meant to look Corinthian. The class was assembled by Payne and named by Beazley after the decoration on an alabastron in the British Museum: the Horse-Bird Group, a circle of Boeotian painters working in closely related styles whose individual names are unknown.

Reassigned to Boeotia, Horse-Bird Group, 580–560 BC. A change of production centre, not merely of hand.

Object Stamnoid olla

Fabric Italo-Geometric, white on red

Date 625–600 BC

Attribution Group of the Bucacce

1/3

A vase still filed under a group that has been dismantled

White on Red vessels of this kind are routinely assigned to the Bolsena Group, the class Colonna first identified and placed at Orvieto. The literature has been taking that framework apart for years.

The vessel is Medori type A, Etruscan White on Red, decorated with concentric circles. Tamburini, Cherici, Camporeale and finally Medori replaced the single Orvieto-centred group with a picture of local production across central-southern Etruria, running from the end of the 8th to the early 6th century. Fabric and type place this one in Visentine manufacture.

Assigned to the Group of the Bucacce, a standardised production of the last quarter of the 7th century — and, given how widely the type is attested in the local necropoleis, most probably from a tomb at Visentium.

Object Olpe

Fabric Attic black-figure

Date 520–500 BC

Attribution Painter or Class of Vatican G50

1/3

An olpe dated across four decades

The piece carried the broad 540–480 BC bracket standard for its class — a span that tells a buyer little and a cataloguer less.

Morphology and decoration place it in the Vatican G50 group: closely related Athenian black-figure olpai, homogeneous in draughtsmanship and likely from a single potter, named by Beazley after an example in the Vatican Museums. Within the group the vessel belongs to the series showing a Dionysiac komos — here a satyr and a maenad rather than the more frequent Dionysus with his cup.

Narrowed to 520–500 BC on close examination: two decades in place of four.

Object Eye-lekythos

Fabric Attic black-figure

Date 530–500 BC

Attribution Phanyllis Painter

1/3

Naming a hand inside a series production

Late sixth-century Athens turned out lekythoi in series, decorated by large groups of painters working to shared patterns. Finding an individual hand in that output is the difficulty.

The general form carries the evidence: the pronounced shoulder decorated with lotus buds, the angular wall profile, and the eye-cup decoration framing a central Dionysiac scene. Together they point to the Phanyllis Painter, an Athenian black-figure painter whose real name is unknown — Haspels designated him after the name inscribed as a dedicatee on a lekythos found at Delos, and a substantial number of vessels have since been given to his hand on stylistic grounds.

Attributed to the Phanyllis Painter, within the Phanyllis Group, one of the large groups specialising in the series production of lekythoi.

Object Bell-krater

Fabric Apulian red-figure

Date 320–300 BC

Attribution Painter of Vatican Z20

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Placing a Late Apulian krater with a hand

A funerary bell-krater of the Late Apulian production, of a quality that puts it near the top of its class but with no hand proposed.

The ornate style, and the use of white overpaint for hairstyles, vegetal ornament and furnishings, belong to the funerary repertoire in which the Vatican Z20 Painter specialised. The reading was tested against comparanda of comparable quality in the Museo Nazionale Ridola, Matera — notably the krater from Timmari — and against Trendall, RVAp 20/160.

Attributed to the Painter of Vatican Z20, a hand recently the subject of archaeometric study on Apulian vessels in the Nicholson Museum, Sydney.

These are summaries. Complete entries and reports are not published here — write to info@lucasalvaggio.com and I will send samples. References on request.

Fields

What I work on

Pottery

Greek Geometric to Late Roman sigillata

The whole range, with particular focus on Attic and South Italian vase-painting: Attic black-figure and red-figure, and Apulian, Lucanian, Campanian, Paestan and Siceliote. Also Orientalising and black-gloss wares, Hellenistic relief ware, Italian and provincial terra sigillata, lead-glazed ware, African Red Slip and lamps. Beazley and Trendall are where an attribution starts, not where it ends: their lists are read against the CVA, excavation reports, and the painter and workshop studies published since.

Bronze statuettes

Bronze Age to Roman Imperial

Aegean and Cypriot figurines, Geometric votive bronzes, Archaic and Classical statuettes, Etruscan and Italic work, Hellenistic types and their Imperial descendants. Also vessel attachments, mirrors, fittings and arms.

Stone sculpture

Daedalic to Late Roman

Daedalic and Archaic figures, Classical and Hellenistic sculpture, Roman ideal work and its Greek models, portraits, funerary reliefs and sarcophagi. Marble and limestone identification where the material allows it, tool marks, weathering, and the evidence of recutting or later restoration — which on this material is often the question that matters.

Coins

Greek to Late Roman

Archaic and Classical Greek issues, Hellenistic royal coinages, Roman Republican and Imperial, and the late empire through the reform coinages. Identification, mint and issue attribution, die study where the material allows it, and citation to the standard corpora — SNG and the regional sylloges, Crawford, RIC.

Mixed consignments

Terracottas, glass, faience and jewellery, and sales that cut across all of the above — where a department would rather brief one specialist than four.

Contact

Enquiries

info@lucasalvaggio.com

Three things in the first email, and I can tell you within a day whether I can take the work:

Photographs: At least five of a figured piece: overall, both sides, the foot or base, and the details you want read.
Provenance: The collection the piece comes from, cited.
Deadline: Turnaround is normally quick and rarely runs past seven working days, but it is always better agreed in advance.

I do not catalogue, attribute or write opinions on material without documented provenance, and I cannot assist with export licensing.