Larissa Bonfante

Larissa Bonfante (born March 27, 1931, in Naples, Italy) is an Italian-American classicist, Professor of Classics emerita at New York University and an authority on Etruscan language and culture.

Born in Naples, a daughter of professor Giuliano Bonfante, Bonfante studied 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.