LANZI, LUIGI. — Jesuit, archaeologist, philologist, and art historian, born at Treja (Macerata) on 4 June 1732, died at Florence on 31 March 1810 (and buried in S. Croce). He taught in Rome, Tivoli, and Viterbo, in the schools of his Order. After its suppression, Pietro Leopoldo, grand duke of Tuscany, appointed him to various offices in Florence, eventually making him antiquarian. He travelled through almost all of Italy for his archaeological and artistic studies. During the Napoleonic domination, he presided, in the Florentine Academy, over the Crusca class, which, since his poor health prevented him from leaving the house, met in his humble cell.
His first noteworthy works were the Guida della R. Galleria di Firenze (Firenze 1782) and the Notizie circa la scultura degli antichi (published in English in 1785 and subsequently several times in Italian). These were followed by the Saggio di lingua etrusca e di altre antiche d’Italia (Roma 1789), a work that earned him the title, confirmed by learned foreign philologists, of father of Paleo-Italian studies and especially of Etruscology. To Nogara, who, following L.’s lead, upheld 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 presented with unfailing judgment and moderation, and with that lucidus ordo which is the foremost quality of every scientific treatise. The Storia pittorica dell’Italia (Bassano 1795–96), the first critical history of the most glorious of the Italian arts, is distinguished from the other outstanding learned works of the eighteenth century by its concise clarity and elegance of exposition. The “learned and judicious” L., as Carducci calls him, also distinguished himself through Latin epigraphs and poems, collected and published in 1807, and through translations of Greek and Latin poets, the most valuable of which is his translation, in terza rima, of I lavori e le giornate by Hesiod (Firenze 1808), which surpasses all its predecessors in fidelity and restrained elegance. But not so much for these literary works as for his 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, L. must be regarded as one of the foremost representatives of Neoclassicism in Italy, a worthy contemporary of his friend Canova. The Opuscoli spirituali, to which the devout abbot devoted himself during the final years of his life, were collected in Naples in 1824.
Lanzian manuscripts are preserved partly in the archive of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence (10 volumes entitled Repertorii di antichità e di pittura and a folder entitled Picturae historiae documenta), and partly in Macerata (particularly noteworthy is a collection of no fewer than 1,171 letters addressed to L. by major Italian and foreign philologists and archaeologists).