Carlo Fea (4 June 1753 - 18 March 1836) was an Italian archaeologist. Born at Pigna, in Liguria, Fea studied law in Rome, receiving the degree of doctor of laws from the university of La Sapienza, but archaeology gradually attracted his attention, and with the view of obtaining better opportunities for his research in 1798 he took Holy Orders and became an Abbott. For political reasons he was forced to take refuge in Florence; on his return to Rome in 1799 he was imprisoned as a Jacobin by the Neapolitans, who at that time were occupying Rome, but was shortly afterwards freed and appointed Commissario delle Antichità and librarian to Prince . At Rome in 1781 Fea discovered a statue of a discus thrower, the so-called "Discobolus", one of the known Roman copies of the famous Greek original s