Luigi Lanzi

Luigi Lanzi SJ
Anonymous portrait of Lanzi from between 1775 and 1799
Born	13 June 1732 Treia, Papal States
Died	31 March 1810 (aged 77) Florence, French Empire
Burial place	Santa Croce, Florence
Occupations	Archaeologist Art historian Museum curator
Parent(s)	Gaetano Lanzi and Bartolomea Lanzi (née Firmani)
Academic background
Alma mater	Roman College
Academic advisor	Rajmundo Kunić
Academic work
Institutions	Uffizi
Main interests	Italian art Etruscan language
Signature

Luigi Antonio Lanzi SJ (13 June 1732 – 31 March 1810) was an Italian Jesuit priest, known for his writings as an art historian and archaeologist. When he died he was buried in the church of the Santa Croce at Florence by the side of Michelangelo.

Biography

Lanzi was born in the central Italian town of Treia in the Papal States on 13 June 1732. He attended Jesuit schools in Fermo and Rome before joining the Jesuit Order in 1749. While in Rome he taught classical literature in Jesuit schools, concurrently absorbing the Neoclassical theories of Johann Joachim Winckelmann and Anton Raphael Mengs.

When the Jesuit Order was suppressed in 1773, he was in Siena, where he had been sent for health reasons. In 1775, Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany appointed him keeper of the galleries of Florence, where he also became president of the Accademia della Crusca. He thereafter studied Italian painting and Etruscan antiquities and language. In the one field, his labours are represented by his Storia Pittorica dell'Italia, the first portion of which, containing the Florentine, Sienese, Roman and Neapolitan schools, appeared in 1792, the rest in 1796.

In archaeology, his great achievement was Saggio di lingua Etrusca (1789), followed by Saggio delle lingue d' Italia in 1806. In his 1806 memoir on the so-called Etruscan vases Dei vasi antichi dipinti volgarmente chiamati Etruschi, Lanzi rightly perceived their Greek origin and characters. What was true of the antiquities would be true also, he argued, of the Etruscan language, and the object of the Saggio di lingua Etrusca was to prove that this language must be related to that of the neighbouring peoples: Romans, Umbrians, Oscans and Greeks.

He was allied with Ennio Quirino Visconti in his great but never accomplished plan of illustrating antiquity altogether from existing literature and monuments. His notices of ancient sculpture and its various styles appeared as an appendix to the Saggio di lingua Etrusca, and arose out of his minute study of the treasures then added to the Florentine collection from the Villa Medici. The abuse he met with from later writers on the Etruscan language led Corssen to protest in the name of his real services to philology and archaeology.

Among his other productions was an edition of Hesiod's Works and Days, with valuable notes, and a translation in terza rima. Begun in 1785, it was recast and completed in 1808. The list of his works closes with his Opere sacre, a series of treatises on spiritual subjects.

Works

• Saggio di lingua etrusca, e di altre antiche d’Italia, per servire alla storia de’ popoli, delle lingue et delle arti, Rome, 1789, 3 vols.
• De’ vasi antichi dipinti, chiamati etruschi, dissertazioni tre. Opuscoli raccolti da accademici italiani relativi a Storia antiquaria e lingue antiche che servono ad illustrarle, Florence, 1806.
• Illustrazioni di due vasi fittili ed altri monumenti recentemente trovati in Pesto, comunicate all'Inclita Accademia Italiana di Scienze Lettere ed Arti, Rome, 1809.
• (1809) Storia pittorica della Italia dal risorgimento delle belle arti fino presso al fine del XVIII secolo; English translation: The History of Painting in Italy, From the Period of the Revival of the Fine Arts to the End of the Eighteenth Century (1828), by Thomas Roscoe:
  • Vol. I, Schools of Florence and Siena
  • Vol. II, Schools of Rome and Naples
  • Vol. III, School of Venice
  • Vol. IV, Schools of Lombardy
  • Vol. V, Schools of Bologna, Ferrara, Genoa, and Piedmont
  • Vol. VI, Indexes
• Di Esiodo Ascreo i Lavori e le Giornate, opera con 4 codici riscontrata, emendata, la versione latina, aggiuntavi l’italiana in terze rime, con annotazioni, Florence, 1808.
• Opere postume dell’abate D. Luigi Lanzi, Florence, 1817, 2 vols.

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Luigi Lanzi — An Italian archeologist, b. at Treia, near Macerata, in 1732; d. at Florence in 1810. In 1749 he joined the Society of Jesus, on the suppression of which, in 1773, the Grand-Duke of Tuscany made him assistant director of the Florentine Museum and curator (antiquario) in 1776. His tomb is in the church of S. Croce, near that of Michael Angelo. He applied himself early to the study of ancient and modern literature (Cicero, Dante, Firenzuola), filled several times chairs of rhetoric, and was elected a member of the literary society of the "Arcadians" (where he was called Argilio Celerio). He wrote in Florence his excellent "Guide to the Museum" (1780), published in the "Giornale di Pisa" (1782). As an archeologist, particularly with regard to Etruscan subjects, Marini styles him the Varro of the eighteenth century. His "Saggio di lingua etrusca e di altre antiche d'Italia" appeared at Rome in 1789 (3 vols.). It was followed by different treatises of the same tenor on ancient paleography, on some ancient vases, and other antiquities. He won still more widespread reputation by his history of modern Italian painting (Storia pittorica dell' Italia dal risorgimento delle belle arti fin presso al fine del XVIII secolo, 3 vols., Bassano, 1795-96). This work, often reprinted (lastly at Venice, 1837-39), was translated into German, French, and English (twice in the latter tongue, by Roscoe, London, 1828, and by Evans, abridged, London, 1831). Lanzi describes the Schools of Art and their development, and opens his narration with the Florentine artists of the thirteenth century, whom he looks upon as the preservers and revivers of art in Italy. He is remarkable for his widespread learning, his masterful grasp of his subject, his sound judgment, and the classic simplicity of his beautiful diction. He never lost his interest in Greco-Roman antiquity, and published at Florence, as late as 1808, a critical edition of Hesiod's "Works and Days", with a Latin and an Italian translation (the latter in three-line stanzas). His qualities as a writer matched his proficiency as a humanist, and he published at Florence (1807) three volumes of "Inscriptiones et Carmina"; he left numerous translations from Catullus, Theocritus, and others, either printed or in manuscript form. Lanzi was always a devout and ascetic priest. A collection of his edifying works on the Sacrament of the Altar, on the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, and on St. Joseph, was published at Rome in 1809.

SOMMERVOGEL, Bibliotheque de la compagnie de Jesus, s. v.; MAURUS BONI, Saggio di Studii del P. Luigi Lanzi (Venice, 1815); ALESS. CAPRI, Biografia di Luigi Lanzi (Forli, 1840).

Bibliography

• Boni, Onofrio (1816). Elogio dell'abate L. Lanzi (in Italian). Pisa: Niccolò Capurro.
• Natali, Giulio (1911). "Nel primo centenario dalla morte di Luigi Lanzi". Atti e Memorie di Regia Deputazione di Storia patria per le province delle Marche. VI. Ancona: 103–125.
• Natali, Giulio (1933). "LANZI, Luigi". Enciclopedia Italiana (in Italian). Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Retrieved 21 August 2025.
• Bernabei, Franco (2003). "Lanzi, Luigi". Grove Art Online. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 25 September 2023.
• Anna Santucci; Fabrizio Capanni, eds. (2010). L'abate Luigi Antonio Lanzi tra filologia classica e letteratura religiosa. Corridonia: Simple. ISBN 978-8862593151.

Further reading

• Gauna, Chiara (2003). La storia pittorica di Luigi Lanzi. Arti, storia e musei nel Settecento (in Italian). Florence: Leo S. Olschki. OCLC 741477098.
• Capanni, Fabrizio (2004). "LANZI, Luigi Antonio". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (in Italian). Vol. 63: Labroca–Laterza. Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. ISBN 978-88-12-00032-6.
• Rossi, Massimiliano (2006). Le fila del tempo: il sistema storico di Luigi Lanzi (in Italian). Florence: Leo S. Olschki. OCLC 82148770.

External links

• Works by or about Luigi Lanzi at the Internet Archive
• Cristofani, Mauro (1976). "Winckelmann, Heyne, Lanzi e l'arte etrusca". Prospettiva. 4 (4): 16–21. JSTOR 24412809.