LANZI, LUIGI. – Jesuit, archaeologist, philologist, and art historian, born at Treja (Macerata) on 4 June 1732, died at Florence on 31 March 1810 (buried in Santa Croce). He taught in Rome, Tivoli, and Viterbo, in the schools of his Order. After its suppression, Pietro Leopoldo, Grand Duke of Tuscany, entrusted him with offices in Florence, culminating in that of antiquary. He traversed nearly all Italy in pursuit of his archaeological and artistic studies. During the Napoleonic occupation, he presided over the Florentine Accademia della Crusca in its linguistic class, which, owing to his frail health, met in his modest cell.
His earliest noteworthy works were the *Guida della R. Galleria di Firenze* (Florence 1782) and the *Notizie circa la scultura degli antichi* (published in English in 1785 and later several times in Italian). Next came the *Saggio di lingua etrusca e di altre antiche d’Italia* (Rome 1789), an opus that earned him the title, confirmed by foreign philologists, of father of Palaeolithic and especially Etruscan studies. To Nogara, who, following LanzI’s lead, upheld the Italic character of Etruscan, this modestly titled *Saggio* “appears as an encyclopaedia of the history, philosophy, and archaeology of the Etruscan and Umbrian peoples, in which
Lanzoni, Francesco – Portrait.
Of his vicissitudes and the obstacles encountered in the course of his scientific activity, LanzI spoke in a work addressed to his nephews: *Le memorie* (Faenza 1930).