Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway (14 November 1929 – 19 October 2024) was an Italian-American archaeologist and specialist in ancient Greek sculpture.
When her father was captured by the British in World War II and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in Kenya, she secured a job as a telephone operator at police headquarters in Asmara (Eritrea) where she learned to speak English.
An archaeology scholarship and Fulbright Travel Grant allowed her to continue her studies at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, where she came under the tutelage of Rhys Carpenter.
[4] Brunilde Ridgway is, in keeping with her mentor Rhys Carpenter, a follower of the radical questioning of the Meisterforschung, or search for the masterpiece or archetype that inspired a replica series, that dominated the history of Greek art since Adolf Furtwängler.
Elaborating on Carpenter's remark that Greek sculpture is “the anonymous product of an impersonal craft,”[5] she maintained that the notion of the artistic personality didn't emerge in the West before the 15th century AD.