LANZI, LUIGI. - Jesuit, archaeologist, philologist and art historian, b. at Treja (Macerata) on 4 June 1732, d. at Florence on 31 March 1810 (and buried in S. Croce). He taught at Rome, at Tivoli, at Viterbo, in the schools of his Order. After its suppression, Pietro Leopoldo, Grand Duke of Tuscany, gave him offices in Florence up to that of antiquarian. He traveled over almost all of Italy for his archaeological and artistic studies. During the Napoleonic domination, he presided, in the Florentine Academy, over the class of the Crusca, which, since he could not leave his house because of his frail health, met in his humble cell.
His first works worthy of note were the Guida della R. Galleria di Firenze (Florence 1782) and the Notizie circa la scultura degli antichi (published in English in 1785 and then several times in Italian). There followed the Saggio di lingua etrusca e di altre antiche d'Italia (Rome 1789), a work that earned him the title, confirmed by learned foreign philologists, of father of paleo-Italic and especially Etruscological studies. To Nogara, a supporter, in the footsteps of L., of the Italic character of Etruscan, this work, too modestly entitled Saggio, appears as an encyclopedia of the history, philosophy and archaeology of Etruscan and Umbrian, in which everything is discussed and set forth with a criterion and measure always uniform and with that lucidus ordo which is the chief gift of every scientific treatise. The Storia pittorica dell'Italia (Bassano 1795-96), which is the first critical history of the most glorious of Italian arts, is distinguished from the other notable erudite works of the eighteenth century by its concise clarity and elegance of exposition. The "learned and judicious" L., as Carducci calls him, also did himself honor with epigraphs and Latin poems, collected and published in 1807, and with translations of Greek and Latin poets, of which the most valuable is that, in terza rima, of Hesiod's Works and Days (Florence 1808), which surpasses all previous ones in fidelity and sober elegance. But it is not so much for these literary works as for the archaeological and historical works, in which he studied with equal love and equal learning the ancient figurative arts and ancient poetry, the Etruscan language and art and Italian painting, that L. must be considered one of the greatest representatives of Neoclassicism in Italy, a worthy contemporary of his friend Canova. The Opuscoli spirituali, to which the pious abbot devoted himself in the last years of his life, were collected at Naples in 1824.
The Lanzi manuscripts are preserved partly in the archive of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence (10 vols. entitled Repertorii di antichità e di pittura and a folder entitled Picturae historiae documenta), partly at Macerata (especially notable is a collection of no fewer than 1171 letters to L. from the leading Italian and foreign philologists and archaeologists).