Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T04:20:19.833Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Mythic Origins, Mythic Archaeology: Etruscan Antiquities in Sixteenth-Century Narratives of the Foundation of Florence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Caroline S. Hillard
Caroline S. Hillard*
Affiliation:
Wright State University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In the 1540s, Giambattista Gelli and Pierfrancesco Giambullari introduced a controversial theory concerning the foundation of Florence. Marshaling spurious textual sources and archaeological remains, they claimed that the city was Etruscan, challenging the long-standing belief in its Roman origin. In a painstaking rebuttal, Vincenzo Borghini rejected their sources, methods, and conclusions. Their three treatises are among the earliest efforts to develop critical methods to establish an artifact’s culture of origin, whether Etruscan, Roman, or medieval. While history has looked more favorably on the work of Borghini, all three manipulated the histories of artifacts to serve competing narratives of Florence’s past.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 69 , Issue 2 , Summer 2016 , pp. 489 - 528
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 Renaissance Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ackerman, James S. “The Tuscan/Rustic Order: A Study in the Metaphorical Language of Architecture.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 42.1 (1983): 15–34.Google Scholar
Alberti, Leon Battista On the Art of Building in Ten Books. Trans. Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Tavernor. Cambridge, MA, 1988.Google Scholar
Alle origini di Firenze: Dalla preistoria alla città romana. Ed. Gabriella Capecchi. Florence, 1996.Google Scholar
Ancillotti, Augusto, and Romolo, Cerri. The Tables of Iguvium: Colour Photographs, Facsimiles, Transliterated Text, Translation and Comment. Perugia, 1997.Google Scholar
Annius of Viterbo (Giovanni Nanni). Antiquitatum Variarum Volumina XVII. Paris, 1512.Google Scholar
Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mediceo del Principato, vol. 1173, insert 8, fol. 385 (28 October 1547, Giovanni Francesco Lottini [il Lottino] in Pisa to Pier Francesco Riccio in Florence). Medici Archive Project, MAP Doc ID# 8245.Google Scholar
Atlante archeologico di Firenze: Indagine storico-archeologica dalla preistoria all’alto medioevo. Ed. Mario Pagni. Florence, 2010.Google Scholar
Barbi, Michele “Degli studi di Vincenzo Borghini sopra la storia e la lingua di Firenze.” Il propugnatore 2 (1889): 5–71.Google Scholar
Barbi, Michele Il trattatello sull’origine di Firenze di Giambattista Gelli. Florence, 1894.Google Scholar
Bareggi, Claudia di Filippo. “In nota alla politica culturale di Cosimo I: L’Accademia Fiorentina.” Quaderni storici 8 (1973): 527–74.Google Scholar
Baron, Hans The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and Republican Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny. Rev. ed., Princeton, 1966.Google Scholar
Baron, Hans In Search of Florentine Civic Humanism: Essays on the Transition from Medieval to Modern Thought. 2 vols. Princeton, 1988.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartoloni, Gilda, and Pacini, Piera Bocci. “The Importance of Etruscan Antiquity in the Tuscan Renaissance.” In The Rediscovery of Antiquity: The Role of the Artist, ed. Jane Fejfer, Tobias Fische-Hansen, and Annette Rathje, 449–79. Copenhagen, 2003.Google Scholar
Bertelli, Sergio “Egemonia linguistica come egemonia culturale e politica nella Firenze cosimiana.” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 38 (1976): 249–83.Google Scholar
Bertelli, Sergio “Firenze, la Toscana, e le origini ‘aramee’ dell’etrusco.” Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell’Università di Siena 2 (1981): 199–207.Google Scholar
Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, Fondo Magliabechiano, Classe XXVIII, Cod. 20. Santi Marmocchini. Dialogo in defensione della lingua toschana.Google Scholar
Borghini, Vincenzo Dell’origine della città di Firenze. In Discorsi di Monsignore D. Vincenzio Borghini, 1:1–316. Florence, 1755.Google Scholar
Braghirolli, W. “Leon Battista Alberti a Mantova.” Archivio storico italiano 3.9 (1869): 3–31.Google Scholar
Bruni, Leonardo Panegyric to the City of Florence. Trans. Benjamin G. Kohl. In The Earthly Republic: Italian Humanists on Government and Society, ed. Kohl and Ronald G. Witt, 135–78. Philadelphia, 1978.Google Scholar
Bruni, Leonardo History of the Florentine People. Trans. James Hankins and D. J. W. Bradley. 3 vols. Cambridge, MA, 2001.Google Scholar
Chastel, André. “L’‘Etruscan Revival’ du XVe siècle.” Revue archéologique 1 (1959): 165–80.Google Scholar
Chiostri, Frido L’acquedotto romano di Firenze. Florence, 2002.Google Scholar
Cianferoni, Giuseppina Carlotta “Gli etruschi nel Chianti.” In Gli etruschi nel Chianti. Il Chianti: Storia, Arte, Cultura, Territorio, 19–34. Radda in Chianti, 1991.Google Scholar
Cipriani, Giovanni Il mito etrusco nel Rinascimento fiorentino. Florence, 1980.Google Scholar
Cocchi, Arnaldo Le chiese di Firenze dal secolo IV al secolo XX. Florence, 1903.Google Scholar
Conestabile, Giancarlo Second spicilegium de quelques monuments écrits, ou épigraphes des Étrusques, musées de Londres, de Berlin, de Manheim, de La Haye, de Paris, de Pérouse (Italie). Paris, 1863.Google Scholar
Cox-Rearick, Janet. Dynasty and Destiny in Medici Art: Pontormo, Leo X, and the Two Cosimos. Princeton, 1984.Google Scholar
Cristofani, Mauro, ed. Urne volterrane. 2. Il Museo Guarnacci, parte prima. Florence, 1977.Google Scholar
D’Alessandro, Alessandro. “Il Gello di Pierfrancesco Giambullari: Mito e ideologia nel principato di Cosimo I.” In La nascita della Toscana: Dal convegno di studi per il IV centenario della morte di Cosimo I de’ Medici, 73–104. Florence, 1980a.Google Scholar
D’Alessandro, Alessandro. “Il mito dell’origine ‘aramea’ di Firenze in un trattatello di Giambattista Gelli.” Archivio storico italiano 138 (1980b): 339–89.Google Scholar
D’Alessandro, Alessandro. “Vincenzio Borghini e gli ‘Aramei’: Mito e storia nel principato Mediceo.” In Firenze e la Toscana dei Medici nell’Europa del ‘500, ed. Giancarlo Garfagnini, 1:133–56. Florence, 1983.Google Scholar
Alighieri, Dante. The Inferno of Dante. Trans. Robert Pinsky. New York, 1994.Google Scholar
De Gaetano, Armand L. “G. B. Gelli and the Rebellion against Latin.” Studies in the Renaissance 14 (1967): 131–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Grummond, Nancy T. “Rediscovery.” In Etruscan Life and Afterlife: A Handbook of Etruscan Studies, ed. Larissa Bonfante, 18–46. Detroit, 1986.Google Scholar
Dionysius of Halicarnassus. The Roman Antiquities. Trans. Earnest Cary. 7 vols. Cambridge, MA, 1937.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Emiliozzi, Adriana Il Museo Civico di Viterbo: Storia delle raccolte archeologiche. Rome, 1986.Google Scholar
Flavio, Biondo Italy Illuminated. Trans. Jeffrey A. White. Vol. 1. Cambridge, MA, 2005.Google Scholar
Forster, Kurt W. “Metaphors of Rule: Political Ideology and History in the Portraits of Cosimo I de’ Medici.” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 15.1 (1971): 65–104.Google Scholar
Fusco, Laurie, and Corti, Gino. Lorenzo de’ Medici: Collector and Antiquarian. New York, 2006.Google Scholar
Gáldy, Andrea M. “The Scrittoio della Calliope in the Palazzo Vecchio: A Tuscan Museum.” Renaissance Studies 19.5 (2005): 699–709.Google Scholar
Gáldy, Andrea M. Cosimo I de’ Medici as Collector: Antiquities and Archaeology in Sixteenth-Century Florence. Newcastle upon Tyne, 2009.Google Scholar
Gelli, Giambattista Dell’origine di Firenze. Ed. Alessandro D’Alessandro. Atti e memorie dell’Accademia Toscana di Scienze e Lettere La Colombaria, 3rd ser., 44 (1979): 61–122.Google Scholar
Giambullari, Pierfrancesco Il Gello di M. Pierfrancesco Giambullari Accademico Fiorentino. Florence, 1546.Google Scholar
Gori, Anton Francesco Inscriptiones Antiquae in Etruriae Urbibus Exstantes. 3 vols. Florence, 1727–43.Google Scholar
Grafton, Anthony “Invention of Traditions and Traditions of Invention in Renaissance Europe: The Strange Case of Annius of Viterbo.” In The Transmission of Culture in Early Modern Europe, ed. Anthony Grafton and Ann Blair, 8–38. Philadelphia, 1990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hankins, James “The ‘Baron Thesis’ after Forty Years, and Some Recent Studies of Leonardo Bruni.” Journal of the History of Ideas 56 (1995): 309–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hankins, James, ed. Renaissance Civic Humanism: Reappraisals and Reflections. New York, 2000.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hartwig, Otto, ed. Chronica de origine civitatis. In Quellen und Forschungen zur ältesten Geschichte der Stadt Florenz, ed. Otto Hartwig, 1:37–65. Marburg, 1875.Google Scholar
Hillard, Caroline “Vasari and the Etruscan Manner.” Sixteenth Century Journal 44.4 (2013): 1021–40.Google Scholar
Jahn, O. “Miscellanei archeologici dal Codice Pighiano della R. Biblioteca di Berlino.” Annali dell’ Instituto di Corrispondenza Archaeologica 24 (1852): 206–16.Google Scholar
Kohl, Benjamin G. “Review Essay of Hans Baron’s From Petrarch to Leonardo Bruni.” History and Theory 9 (1970): 121–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krautheimer, Richard “Alberti’s Templum Etruscum.” Münchner Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst 12 (1961): 65–72.Google Scholar
Ligota, Cristopher R. “Annius of Viterbo and Historical Method.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 50 (1987): 44–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lingo, Estelle François Duquesnoy and the Greek Ideal. New Haven, 2007.Google Scholar
Lopes Pegna, Mario. Firenze dalle origini al medioevo. Florence, 1962.Google Scholar
Machiavelli, Niccolò. Florentine Histories. Trans. C. Edwards Lester. 2 vols. New York, 1845.Google Scholar
Maffei, Raffaele (Volaterranus). Commentariorum Urbanorum XXXIII Libri. Rome, 1506.Google Scholar
Martelli, Marina “Un disegno attribuito a Leonardo e una scoperta archeologica degli inizi del ‘500.” Prospettiva 10 (1977): 58–61.Google Scholar
Martinelli, Maurizio “Firenze e le origini etrusche.” In Atlante archeologico di Firenze (2010a), 45–68.Google Scholar
Martinelli, Maurizio “Gli etruschi tra Firenze, Fiesole, e l’agro fiorentino.” In Atlante archeologico di Firenze (2010b), 69–112.Google Scholar
Martini, Fabio, Poggesi, Gabriella, and Sarti, Lucia. Lunga memoria della piana: L’area fiorentina dalla preistoria alla romanizzazione, guida alla mostra. Florence, 1999.Google Scholar
Massa-Pairault, Francoise-Helene. “La stele di ‘Avile Tite’ da Raffaele il Volterrano ai giorni nostri.” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome – Antiquité 103 (1991): 499–528.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Massinelli, Anna Maria, ed. Bronzetti e anticaglie nella Guardaroba di Cosimo I. Florence, 1991.Google Scholar
Mensi, Elisa La fortezza di Firenze e il suo territorio in epoca romana. Florence, 1991.Google Scholar
Morolli, Gabriele Vetus Etruria: Il mito degli Etruschi nella letteratura architettonica nell’arte e nella cultura da Vitruvio a Winckelmann. Florence, 1985.Google Scholar
Moyer, Ann E. “Historians and Antiquarians in Sixteenth-Century Florence.” Journal of the History of Ideas 64.2 (2003): 177–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moyer, Ann E. “‘Without Passion or Partisanship’: Florentine Historical Writing in the Age of Cosimo I.” In History and Nation, ed. Julia Rudolph, 45–69. Lewisburg, 2006.Google Scholar
Najemy, John M. “Civic Humanism and Florentine Politics.” In Renaissance Civic Humanism: Reappraisals and Reflections, ed. James Hankins, 75–104. New York, 2000.Google Scholar
Pallottino, Massimo “Vasari e la Chimera.” Prospettiva 8 (1977): 4–6.Google Scholar
Plaisance, Michel “Une première affirmation de la politique culturelle de Côme Ier: La transformation de l’Académie des ‘Humidi’ en Académie Florentine.” In Les écrivains et le pouvoir en Italie à l’époque de la Renaissance, ed. André Rochon, 1st ser., 361–438. Paris, 1973.Google Scholar
Plaisance, Michel “Culture et politique à Florence de 1542 à 1551: Lasca et les ‘Humidi’ aux prises avec l’Académie Florentine.” In Les écrivains et le pouvoir en Italie à l’époque de la Renaissance, ed. André Rochon, 2nd ser., 149–242. Paris, 1974.Google Scholar
Pliny the Elder. Natural History. Trans. H. Rackham, W. H. S. Jones, and D. E. Eichholz. 10 vols. Cambridge, MA, 1938–63.Google Scholar
Poliziano, Angelo Letters. Trans. Shane Butler. Vol. 1. Cambridge, MA, 2006.Google Scholar
Pozzi, Mario “Mito aramaico-etrusco e potere assoluto a Firenze al tempo di Cosimo I.” In Le pouvoir monarchique et ses supports idéologiques aux XIVe–XVIIe siècles, ed. Jean Dufournet, Adelin Charles Fiorato, and Augustin Redondo, 65–76. Paris, 1990.Google Scholar
Richa, Giuseppe Notizie istoriche delle chiese fiorentini. 10 vols. Florence, 1754–62.Google Scholar
Richelson, Paul Studies in the Personal Imagery of Cosimo I, Duke of Florence. New York, 1978.Google Scholar
Rowland, Ingrid D. “L’Historia Porsennae e la conoscienza degli Etruschi.” Res Publica Litterarum 11 (1989): 185–93.Google Scholar
Rowland, Ingrid D. The Culture of the High Renaissance: Ancients and Moderns in Sixteenth-Century Rome. New York, 1998.Google Scholar
Rubinstein, Nicolai “The Beginnings of Political Thought in Florence.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942): 198–227.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rubinstein, Nicolai “Il Poliziano e la questione delle origini di Firenze.” In Il Poliziano e il suo tempo: Atti del IV convegno internazionale di studi sul Rinascimento, Firenze, Palazzo Strozzi, 23–26 settembre 1954, 101–10. Florence, 1957.Google Scholar
Rubinstein, Nicolai “Bartolomeo Scala’s Historia Florentinorum.” In Studi di bibliografia e di storia in onore di Tammaro de Marinis, 4:49–59. Verona, 1964.Google Scholar
Rubinstein, Nicolai “Vasari’s Painting of the Foundation of Florence in the Palazzo Vecchio.” In Essays in the History of Architecture Presented to Rudolf Wittkower, ed. Douglas Fraser, Howard Hibbard, and Milton J. Lewine, 64–73. London, 1967.Google Scholar
Salutati, Coluccio “Invectiva in Antonium Luschum Vicentinum.” In Prosatori latini del Quattrocento, ed. Eugenio Garin, 8–22. Milan, 1952.Google Scholar
Salutati, Coluccio “Defense of the Roman Origins of Florence.” In Images of Quattrocento Florence: Selected Writings in Literature, History, and Art, ed. Stefano Ugo Baldassarri and Arielle Saiber, 3–11. New Haven, 2000.Google Scholar
Salvini, Monica, “L’età del Ferro a Firenze: Le tombe ‘del Gambrinus.’” In Alle origini di Firenze (1996), 117–43.Google Scholar
Saracco, Lisa “Un’apologia della Hebraica veritas nella Firenze di Cosimo I: Il Dialogo in defensione della lingua thoscana di Santi Marmochino O.P.” Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa 42 (2006): 215–46.Google Scholar
Sarti, Lucia, and Martini, Fabio. “Prima di Firenze: Il popolamento umano del territorio durante la preistoria.” In Alle origini di Firenze (1996), 22–35.Google Scholar
Sarti, Lucia “Le popolazioni più antiche: Preistoria e protostoria nella piana di Firenze.” In Atlante archeologico di Firenze (2010), 29–41.Google Scholar
Scala, Bartolomeo Bartholomaei Scalae Equitis Florentini de Historia Florentinorum Quae Extant in Bibliotheca Medicaea. Ed. Oliger Jacobaeus. Rome, 1677.Google Scholar
Serlio, Sebastiano Regole generali di architetura sopra le cinque maniere de gli edifici, cioe, thoscano, dorico, ionico, corinthio et composto, con gli essempi dell’antiquita, che, per la magior parte concordano con la dottrina di Vitruvio. Venice, 1537.Google Scholar
Seigel, Jerrold “‘Civic Humanism’ or Ciceronian Rhetoric? The Culture of Petrarch and Bruni.” Past and Present 34 (1966): 3–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sherberg, Michael “The Accademia Fiorentina and the Question of the Language: The Politics of Theory in Ducal Florence.” Renaissance Quarterly 56.1 (2003): 26–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simoncelli, Paolo La lingua di Adamo: Guillaume Postel tra accademici e fuoriusciti fiorentini. Florence, 1984.Google Scholar
Spencer, John R. “Volterra, 1466.” Art Bulletin 48.1 (1966): 95–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Starn, Randolph, and Partridge, Loren. Arts of Power: Three Halls of State in Italy, 1300–1600. Berkeley, 1992.Google Scholar
Staatsbibliothek Berlin, Codex Pighianus, MS Lat. fol. 61, fol. 55v. “De sepulcris in antro apud Castellinum Etruriarum oppidum repertis epistola ad cardinalem Volaterranum.” Census of Antique Works of Art and Architecture Known in the Renaissance. Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. http://census.bbaw.de/easydb/censusID=251796.Google Scholar
Stephens, Walter “The Etruscans and the Ancient Theology in Annius of Viterbo.” In Umanesimo a Roma nel Quattrocento, ed. Paolo Brezzi and Maristella de Panizza Lorch, 309–22. New York, 1984.Google Scholar
Stephens, Walter Giants in Those Days: Folklore, Ancient History, and Nationalism. Lincoln, 1989.Google Scholar
Stephens, Walter “When Pope Noah Ruled the Etruscans: Annius of Viterbo and His Forged ‘Antiquities.’” MLN 119.1, Italian Issue Supplement: Studia Humanitatis: Essays in Honor of Salvatore Camporeale (Jan. 2004): S201–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tigerstedt, E. “Ioannes Annius and Graecia Mendax.” In Classical, Mediaeval, and Renaissance Studies in Honor of Berthold Louis Ullman, ed. C. Henderson Jr., 2:293–310. Rome, 1962.Google Scholar
Tizio, Sigismondo Historiae Senenses. Ed. Manuela Doni Garfagnini. Volume 1, book 1, part 1. Rome, 1992.Google Scholar
Vasari, Giorgio I ragionamenti. In Le opere di Giorgio Vasari, ed. Gaetano Milanesi, vol. 8:11–225. Florence, 1882.Google Scholar
Vasari, Giorgio Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori scultori e architettori nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568. Ed. Rosanna Bettarini and Paola Barocchi. 6 vols. Florence, 1966–87.Google Scholar
Villani, Giovanni Nuova cronica. Ed. Giuseppe Porta. 3 vols. Parma, 1990.Google Scholar
Vitruvius. Ten Books of Architecture. Ed. Ingrid D. Rowland and Thomas Noble Howe. Trans. Ingrid D. Rowland. New York, 1999.Google Scholar
Waźbiński, Zygmunt. “Le polemiche intorno al battistero fiorentino nel Cinquecento.” In Filippo Brunelleschi: La sua opera e il suo tempo, 2:933–50. Florence, 1980.Google Scholar
Weiss, Roberto “Traccia per una biografia di Annio da Viterbo.” Italia medioevale e umanistica 5 (1962): 425–41.Google Scholar
Witt, Ronald “The Crisis after Forty Years.” American Historical Review 101 (1996): 110–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar