LANZI, LUIGI, a celebrated Italian archaeologist, and the historian of Italian art, was born in 1732, at Monte dell'Almo (Ulmodunum), near Fermo, in the States of the Church. He was carefully trained at home, and made great and rapid progress, especially in the classics. Cicero was his favourite author. He used to boast that he knew nearly all his works off by heart. In his eighteenth year he joined the Jesuits, studied at their college in Fermo under the celebrated Boscovich, taught publicly in various schools, and made himself a considerable name as a teacher and elegant writer. When the order of Jesus was suppressed, he adopted the career of letters. In 1775, Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, made him sub-director, and, in the following year, antiquario, or conservator, of the Florentine Gallery. The next six years of his life were spent in preparing his Guida della Galleria di Firenze, in which the history of the objects in the collection is traced with great learning and critical skill, and, at the same time, so agreeably as to interest the mere pleasure-seeker. In 1789 he published his Saggio di lingua Etrusca. His design in this essay was to draw the attention of scholars to the archaeology of Tuscany; and he may be said by it to have created this difficult branch of erudition. Before his day native antiquarians had been in the habit of elevating the civilization of Etruria, by maintaining that its religion and mythology owed nothing to Grecian influence. Lanzi, taking a different
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view, claimed a Greek origin for both, and his opinion has been followed by continental scholars. His Saggio was a work of immense erudition and research, and placed him at the head of the antiquarians of modern Italy. In the course of his wanderings through Italy in quest of materials for these works, Lanzi had conceived the idea of a general history of Italian art. He was encouraged in the idea by his old friend and colleague, Tiraboschi, who had some time before completed his own history of Italian literature. The Storia Pittorica della Italia came in time to supply a want that had long been felt. There was no general history of painting, and the histories of particular epochs, as well as the biographies of individual artists, merely recorded the private opinions and prejudices of their authors. They were all partial, and without method, or a philosophical standard of taste and criticism. Lanzi, following out the plan of Winckelmann, gives a separate history of each school. After giving its general character, he distinguishes it into three, four, or more epochs, according as its style underwent changes with the change of taste, in the same way that the eras of civil history are deduced from revolutions in governments, or other remarkable events. A few celebrated painters, who swayed the public taste, and gave a new tone to the art, are placed at the head of each epoch; and their style is particularly described, because the general and characteristic taste of the age was formed upon their models. Their immediate pupils and other disciples follow the great masters; and, without a repetition of the general character, reference is made to what each has borrowed, altered, or added to the style of the founder of the school. This method, though not susceptible of strict chronological order, is much better adapted to a history of art than either an alphabetic arrangement or a body of separate lives. The first portion of the Storia Pittorica, containing the schools of Lower Italy—that is, the Florentine, Sieneese, Roman, and Neapolitan schools—was published in 1792. The publication of the rest of the work was delayed by the author's bad health, and only appeared in 1796, at Bassano, whither he had gone to recruit. There is a good translation of it in English by Thomas Roscoe. When the French became masters of that part of Italy, Lanzi retired to Treviso, and afterwards to Udine. In the latter city he remained till 1801, when he returned to Florence, and resumed his duties in the ducal gallery. Soon after his return, he was made president of the Cruscan Academy. His next literary undertaking was three dissertations upon Ancient Painted Vases, commonly called Etruscan, which he followed up with his learned and pleasantly written Inscriptionum et Carminum libri tres. Among his latest productions may be mentioned his edition of Hesiod's Works and Days, with valuable notes, and a translation in terza rima. It had been begun as far back as 1785; but was re-cast and completed in 1808. The list of his works closes with his Opere Sacre, a series of treatises on spiritual subjects. Lanzi himself attached more importance to these than to any other of his writings, and was often heard to say that he would gladly renounce all kind of literary honours for the pleasure of being assured that his sacred works had in any degree promoted the cause of Christianity. Lanzi died of apoplexy, March 30, 1810, in the seventy-eighth year of his age. He was buried in the church of the Santa Croce at Florence, by the side of Michael Angelo.