Francesco Arcangeli

Francesco Arcangeli (18 May 1737 – 20 July 1768) was an Italian cook and criminal, the murderer of the famous art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768).

Francesco Ancangeli was born on 18 May 1737 in Campiglio di Cireglio, a hamlet of the municipality of Pistoia then in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.

[1] Johann Joachim Winckelmann, the 50-year-old Prefect of Antiquities of Pope Clement XIII, was traveling to visit his native Germany after a 13-year absence, accompanied by his friend, the sculptor Bartolomeo Cavaceppi.

Arcangeli was arrested and sentenced to death on 18 July to be beaten alive on a wheel on the city's main square.

[1] Prof. Lionel Gossman, for example, believes that there are reminiscences of Winckelmann's murder, whether conscious or not, in Thomas Mann's Death in Venice (1913).

[6] In the course of the six interrogations to which he was subjected Arcangeli provided contradictory versions of events: he said he had killed Winckelmann because he thought he was a spy, or to rob him, or because he was a Jew or a Lutheran.

[8] The strangeness of Winckelmann's behavior was also noticed, i.e. his registration under assumed name, the absence of any contact with authorities or notable people during his stay in Trieste as well as his association with a disreputable individual like Arcangeli and his reticence to openly identify himself in the hours before his death.