As an exponent of the
anthropometric school, Cipriani was particularly interested in systematic measurements (
cranial, but also of hands, feet, and all other kinds of body parts), and he was also fond of making plaster facial moulds made from life, for which he procured models among the populations he encountered. Cipriani's three journeys in Africa were documented by a large number of photographs and the chronicle was reported in his book
In Africa dal Capo al Cairo (‘In Africa from the Cape to Cairo’) (1932): over 600 pages of anthropological,
zoological,
botanical and
geological information. His Indian work started in the South, in collaboration with the late Prof.
Anantha K. Iyer and his work on the
physical anthropology of the
Toda (Arch. per l'Antrop. e la Etnol. LXVII, 1937 XV) and of the
Coorg,
Kuruba, Ierava etc. (Idem, LXV, 1935) throws new light on these populations. Later, as a Foreign Fellow of the
Anthropological Survey of India he collaborated with the late Dr.
B. S. Guha in his work on the
Onge of
Little Andaman Island. In the summer of 1942, Cipriani arrived in
Crete which was then
under Axis occupation. With the aim of anthropologically studying the Cretans, he traveled from one end of the island to the other and took anthropological measurements on 2,375 men and women, most of whom he photographed. At the same time he captured activities and tasks, ceremonies, habits, houses, landscapes, archaeological sites and elements of the fauna and flora of Crete. In May 1943 he published in Florence his study "Creta e l'origine mediterranea della civiltà", in which he included a small fraction of the material he had collected in Crete. His archive was rediscovered in 2012 and latter published in its entirety in a bilingual (Greek/Italian) book. Cipriani died in his native Florence at the age of seventy on the 8 October 1962. A committed
fascist, Cipriani was one of the authors of the
Manifesto of Race, published on 14 July 1938 in ''
Il Giornale d'Italia''. == Works ==