TOSCANA

TUSCANY. -

I. GEOGRAPHY

It is the largest of the historical regions of peninsular Italy (23,000 sq. km.).

As such, it comprises terrains of very different nature and appearance: a coastal strip, partly well-cultivated and flourishing (between the mouths of the Magra and the Arno) and partly, to the south, recently reclaimed (Maremma); a mountainous complex (the southern slope of the Apennines) in which fertile basins open up (Lunigiana, Garfagnana, Mugello, Casentino) and which, in its higher parts, is covered by woods and chestnut groves; and, between the two, other mountains and hills that enclose some of the most densely inhabited areas, along the courses of the Serchio, the Arno and their tributaries (Chianti Mountains), and, on the other hand, barren and sparsely populated areas, though endowed with notable mineral resources (metalliferous hills). Overall, Tuscany, despite the modest extent of its plains, is predominantly agricultural, and most of its population lives on farms, which tenant farmers usually hold under sharecropping arrangements, except in the southern districts (Maremma), where large estates and major centres prevail instead. Among the crops, those of the olive and the vine stand out, for which Tuscany holds a leading position in Italian production, especially when quality is taken into account; but by no means negligible are those of wheat, sugar beet, legumes and fruit trees, etc. Less important, on the other hand, are the exploitation of forests (though the chestnut harvest is considerable) and livestock farming.

The sub-Apennine zones make a substantial contribution to the extractive industry, which has been practised since pre-Roman times: marble in the Apuan Alps, iron pyrites in the Grosseto area, mercury from Mount Amiata, the boraciferous fumaroles of Volterra (Larderello) and, above all, the iron ores of Elba, which supply the blast furnaces of Piombino. However, processing industries have had and retained only a modest development in Tuscany, as shown by the fact that local craftsmanship, supported by a long artistic tradition, has been able to survive substantially intact. Even so, Tuscany boasts, among other things, a considerable number of metallurgical enterprises (Piombino, Livorno, Elba, S. Giovanni Valdarno), an efficient linen mill (Prato), renowned shipyards (Livorno, Viareggio) and numerous smaller establishments in various branches of industry. Trade also occupies a notable place: as a transit zone between northern and southern Italy, Tuscany is crossed by the two main railway lines of the peninsula, the coastal one that terminates at Pisa and the inland one that passes through Florence, while the sea plays a rather modest role in its trade, given the limited extent of its hinterland along a coast that is already quite extensive.

The population (3.2 million inhabitants in 1951) has a density slightly below the Italian average, which is to be related to the sparse settlement of the mountainous areas and the still incomplete reclamation of the Maremma: the highest densities are found in the provinces of Florence and Livorno, while the lowest are in those of Siena and Grosseto. On the other hand, scattered settlement is more widespread here than in Italy as a whole; yet, despite this and in connection with its vigorous municipal history, Tuscany has a good number of large and medium-sized urban centres: 2 cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, 8 (in addition to the provincial capitals, Prato) with more than 50,000; 13 with more than 20,000 inhabitants.

| Provinces | Area sq. km. | Population in 1,000s | Density per sq. km. | Capitals and population in 1,000s |
|-----------|--------------|----------------------|---------------------|-----------------------------------|
| Arezzo | 3,232 | 329.3 | 102 | Arezzo (66) |
| Florence | 3,880 | 917.8 | 239 | Florence (376) |
| Grosseto | 4,496 | 211.5 | 49 | Grosseto (38) |
| Livorno | 1,220 | 281.0 | 230 | Livorno (141) |
| Lucca | 1,772 | 364.9 | 206 | Lucca (87) |
| Massa and Carrara | 1,156 | 203.4 | 176 | Massa (50) |
| Pisa | 2,448 | 348.5 | 142 | Pisa (77) |
| Pistoia | 962 | 219.1 | 228 | Pistoia (77) |
| Siena | 3,821 | 277.0 | 72 | Siena (52) |
| Tuscany | 22,986 | 3,152.5 | 137 | |

II. HISTORY

The unitary character that Etruria had maintained during the Etruscan period was lost in 90 BC, when it was included in the Roman citizenry. Under Augustus, Etruria became the seventh region of the Empire. The Romans also called it *Tuscia* (whence Tuscania), a name that became official under Diocletian.

Information on the evangelisation of Tuscany is uncertain. It may be considered that the first penetration of Christianity occurred already in the 1st century, even though there is no positive evidence to support the tradition that makes St Linus, pope, born in Volterra, and names St Frontinus as bishop of Florence and St Paulinus as bishop of Lucca. In the 4th century, St Felix was probably the first bishop of Florence and Gaudentius of Pisa. The oldest dioceses were those of Fiesole, Lucca, Pisa, Arezzo, Siena, Chiusi, Florence and Pistoia. From the 5th century, barbarian devastations also made ecclesiastical conditions difficult.

A certain unity was restored to Tuscany by the Lombards, who made it a duchy with its centre at Lucca, which became a county under the Franks, until Adalbert in the 9th century held the title of marquis. Around the middle of the 11th century, the marquisate passed to the Attoni, and under Matilda (1046-1115) it played an important part in the Investiture Controversy. During this period, popes of Tuscan origin ascended the papal throne: Nicholas II, bishop of Florence, Alexander II, bishop of Lucca, and a century later Alexander III, a Sienese. At the beginning of the 11th century, St Romuald extended the Camaldolese Order there, and St John Gualbert founded the Vallombrosan Order.

After Matilda’s death, a centrifugal movement became evident in the marquisate, accompanying the rise of a new civilisation: rural economy progressed and changed, and in the cities the new industrial and mercantile classes overthrew the power of the feudal lords. The communes, aided by the active collaboration of the bishops, fought for their freedom, no longer having any sense of regional solidarity, and instead looked to distant sovereign authorities such as the Papacy and the Empire, hastening the fragmentation of the region, so that for centuries one can no longer speak of a history of Tuscany, but rather of that of the individual communes that now compose it only geographically. In fact independent, the communes sought to expand, and each aspired to supremacy over its rivals. In the 11th and 12th centuries, Lucca and Pisa stood out, and finally the latter prevailed; then, defeated by Genoa, it ceded primacy to Florence, which in turn subjugated the nearby Pistoia and Arezzo. The attempts of Uguccione della Faggiola and Castruccio Castracani were aimed at territorial conquests without any intention of reconstructing a regional state.

In the first decades of the 13th century, the Servite Order (v.) was founded in Florence, and at Lecceto, near Siena, the Augustinian Hermits (v.) had one of their most important centres. In the first half of the 14th century, some Sienese patricians founded the Benedictine Congregation of Monte Oliveto. In 1367, the Sienese Jesuit Order was approved by Urban V. Among the Tuscan saints of this period are to be remembered St Catherine of Siena and St Andrew Corsini, bishop of Fiesole.

The political aspect of T. did not change with the brief lordship of the Medici. Although pursuing its plan of hegemony through the conquest of Pisa and Volterra, the State, even though territorially encompassing all of T., remained in law and in fact the Republic of Florence. In the 15th century, T. gave the Church a pope, Pius II, and the saints Antoninus, bishop of Florence, and Bernardino of Siena. Upon the death of Lorenzo de’ Medici, the unity of the region was again disrupted: the republicans ceded Sarzana to Genoa, Pietrasanta to Lucca, while Pisa regained its independence; separatist tendencies rekindled, and in the war of 1530 Florence saw some of the previously subject cities fighting on the opposing side. The Medici principality during the lordships of the two Medici popes Leo X and Clement VII was even more Florentine than Tuscan. A Tuscan policy, barely outlined by Duke Alessandro, was only implemented by Cosimo I, who conquered Siena and, after the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis, overthrew the last bastion of the municipal republic, Montalcino. Through political, administrative, and financial reforms, Cosimo I gave new homogeneity to the principality; and to loosen the ties binding it to Spain, he also relied on the Holy See, which in this century and the next would be, within Italy’s means, the principal center of resistance to foreign domination. This unitary revival of T. was officially consecrated in 1569 by the concession that Pius V granted to Cosimo of the title of Grand Duke of T.

Protestant penetration was of little significance, limited almost exclusively to Lucca, from which some families emigrated to Geneva, and to Siena, TONCHINO (v.) and of Lelio and Fausto Socini (v.).

The central power, sustained by the energy of Cosimo, who had completely stripped the mercantile and banking aristocracy of its civic power by creating a class of officials chosen by the prince rather than by birthright, weakened under his feeble son Francesco I (1574–87). It revived under Ferdinand I (1587–1609), who protected men of letters and artists, expanded the University of Pisa, began reclamation of marshy zones, and promoted the development of Livorno. He sought to free T. from Spanish entanglements by adopting a policy of understanding with France and succeeded in inserting T. into European politics. A friend of Henry IV, he gave his niece Maria in marriage to the king; he gave strong impetus to the maritime activity of the Knights of St Stephen, established by Cosimo I. In the 17th century, T. also became, through the work of Galileo and his pupils, a center of scientific activity until the Accademia del Cimento was founded in 1657. Cosimo II (1609–21) attempted to continue the policy of balance between France and Spain, but soon had to yield to Spanish predominance. Under him, the Order of St Stephen carried out its final enterprises in the struggle against the Turks. Decline was accentuated in agriculture and trade, with the consequence of acute demographic depression. Yet during the government of Ferdinand II (1621–70), who vainly attempted, in the Thirty Years’ War, to form a league of Italian states and derived no benefit from forced participation in the War of the Mantuan Succession and that of Castro, the Tuscan economy experienced a spontaneous revival. Agriculture recovered as nobles reinvested their capital in land, reclamation was resumed, and the population resumed its upward trend.

In the 17th century, the following were elected popes: Alessandro de’ Medici, archbishop of Florence, Leo XI; the Sienese Fabio Chigi, Alexander VII; the picturesque Giulio Rospigliosi, Clement IX; the Florentine Maffeo Barberini, Urban VIII.
Under Cosimo III (1670–1723), international discussions began regarding the fate of T., anticipating the imminent end of the Medici house. While Cosimo remained almost detached from the negotiations, the powers, through the Treaty of London of 1718, assigned T. to Charles II of Spain, son of Philip V; but at the end of the War of the Polish Succession, the grand duchy was assigned to Francis Stephen of Lorraine. Gian Gastone (1723–37), thus left without heirs at the head of a state whose fate was already sealed, was succeeded by a regency under Francis Stephen. When Francis assumed the imperial throne in 1745, Tuscan autonomy seemed annulled; but in 1762, through the marriage convention between his third son Peter Leopold and Maria Luisa of Bourbon, Francis committed himself to detach T. from the Empire and give it to his son. Three years later, upon Francis’s death, Peter Leopold was welcomed to Florence with enthusiasm. A typical example of an enlightened monarch, he wisely surrounded himself with native elements who had performed best during the regency and launched, though perhaps too impetuously, a reforming drive first in agriculture, establishing in 1766 a Consulta that included Francesco Gianni and Pompeo Neri, with the collaboration of bishops and parish priests. The fruit of his activity was the census. All immovable property, even that of the sovereign, was subjected to public burdens, alleviating

1) Regional boundaries; 2) provincial boundaries; 3) ecclesiastical district boundaries; 4) roads; 5) railways; 6) oratories; 7) abbeys; 8) parish churches.

The tax burden on small landowners. To increase their number, efforts were made to encourage the subdivision of large estates, thereby forming a middle class of free cultivators and small proprietors. Alongside the law proclaiming the negotiability of all lands, reclamation projects were undertaken in the Maremma of Siena, the Valdichiana, and the Valdinievole. In economic policy, Leopold pursued the directives outlined by Bandini in his Discourse on Economics of 1737. Neri’s Reflections on the Grain Trade popularized free-market doctrines. The reform of 1775 granted absolute freedom for the importation of cereals and the trade in bread. The customs reform abolished all internal tolls, establishing a single customs barrier at the state’s frontier; capital flowed into agriculture, and production rapidly increased. In administrative matters, the reform was based on principles of decentralization entirely opposed to those of enlightened despotism. Municipalities enjoyed almost complete autonomy, and their magistracies were filled by lot from among landowners, heads of peasant households, and artisans. The revival of ancient titles—*priori* and *gonfaloniere*—was not a restoration of the past but an anticipation of the civic representation of the modern commune as an autonomous entity.

In the judicial sphere, the new criminal legislation of 1786 abolished torture, suppressed the death penalty, and guaranteed the accused the right to defense and an impartial trial. Leopold encountered strong opposition, however, in his ecclesiastical policies, for without regard to the sentiments of his people, he relied exclusively on anti-papal Jansenist tendencies. He suppressed many religious orders, transferring their assets to poor parishes, introduced the *placet* and *exequatur*, abolished ecclesiastical tithes by subjecting all property to the grand ducal tithe, suppressed the tribunals of the Inquisition and the Nunciature, eliminated the privilege of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and interfered deeply in the internal organization of the Church. He severed the dependence of convents on foreign superiors, modified their rules by fixing admission standards, and placed them under the jurisdiction of bishops. While seeking to improve the economic conditions and cultural level of the lower clergy, he allowed parish priests to appeal to the sovereign even in disciplinary matters. He further decreed that bishops should convene a diocesan synod every two years and subjected ecclesiastical councils and assemblies to state jurisdiction, in which he insisted on being represented.

In this activity, Leopold was certainly inspired by the example of his brother Joseph II, but he was also driven in particular by Scipione de’ Ricci (v.), bishop of Pistoia and Prato. In 1790, when Leopold became emperor, he ceded Tuscany to his son Ferdinand. The inexperience and weakness of Ferdinand allowed opponents to organize a movement that, under pressure from more or less spontaneous or tolerated popular demonstrations, induced the grand duke to revoke much of his father’s legislation. Tuscan Catholicism rebelled against Leopold’s ecclesiastical reforms, as it had elsewhere against Josephinism; yet it must be noted that many modern institutions were not foreign imports but the fruit of Tuscany’s economic revival, promoted by the Lorraine legislation.

During the Revolution, Ferdinand III maintained friendly relations with Paris, refusing—despite pressure from the powers—to join the anti-French coalition. Only when England threatened to occupy Livorno did he abandon neutrality and expel the French. Relations with Paris continued, however, and on 9 February 1795 a separate peace was concluded. In 1798, despite his scrupulous neutrality, Ferdinand was deposed and departed for Vienna. Restored in 1799, he soon had to leave Tuscany again; after Marengo, by the Treaty of Lunéville, it became the Kingdom of Etruria and was assigned to Louis of Bourbon, son of the Duke of Parma. Bonaparte respected its independence until, by the Treaty of Fontainebleau (1807), the King of Etruria ceded Tuscany to Napoleon in exchange for Lusitania. Annexed to France, Tuscany was governed directly from Paris, even after Napoleon, in 1809, granted Elisa Baciocchi the title of grand duchess.

The reorganization of the Tuscan Guard provoked unrest that flared into riots in Livorno and culminated in the arrest of Guerrazzi. Only on 17 February did the grand duke, following the example of Naples, grant a constitution. When the uprisings in Milan and Venice and the fall of Metternich gave Italian princes the impression that Austria could no longer defend its hegemony, Leopold decided to take part in the war. In May, Tuscan battalions—largely composed of student volunteers—halted Radetzky’s advance at Curtatone and Montanara, buying time for the Piedmontese army to cross the Mincio and take up battle positions, a move that led to the victory at Goito.

After the failure of the federal war of 1848, the ministry presided over by Gino Capponi found itself caught between two adversaries: the grand duke’s supporters and the democrats who dominated Livorno. Giuseppe Montanelli’s proposal to convene an Italian constituent assembly in Rome sowed the seeds of disintegration in the national movement. The Capponi ministry resigned and was succeeded by a democratic government under Guerrazzi and Montanelli. The grand duke initially signed a decree convoking a constituent assembly to conclude a federal pact ensuring Italy’s unity and independence while respecting the existence and form of government of each state; he then changed his mind and left Florence for Siena and Porto Santo Stefano. The grand duke’s departure paralyzed the ministry, which was replaced by a triumvirate of Guerrazzi, Montanelli, and Mazzoni. This body dissolved the chambers and replaced them with a single assembly to decide the form of government for Tuscany. After the grand duke fled to Gaeta on 21 February, the more radical elements gained the upper hand, and Guerrazzi was granted dictatorial powers. He attempted to reconcile with moderates and rely on the National Guard, which opposed a republic. It appears he intended to prepare for the grand duke’s return, hoping that a spontaneous gesture of recall might save the constitutional liberties. Yet the Livornese volunteers who had accompanied him to Florence and whom he now sought to dismiss provoked disturbances that gravely damaged his prestige. When he attempted to convene the assembly in a regular manner so that the legitimate representatives of the people might proclaim the restoration of constitutional monarchy, the National Guard refused to support him. The liberal municipal government, in a misguided attempt to curry favor with the grand duke, allowed the most reactionary elements free rein and had Guerrazzi arrested.

Meanwhile, Leopold had already reached an agreement with Vienna. Austrian troops, having crushed resistance in Livorno, entered Florence on 25 May, followed on 28 July by the grand duke. From that moment, Leopold was regarded by the Tuscans as a foreign prince holding power with the aid of foreign arms.

In 1852 Leopold revoked the Constitution and consented to conclude a Concordat with the Holy See. This was followed by Mazzinian infiltration and political assassinations hitherto unknown. Trials and perpetual bans struck a good number of patriots, and Tuscan politics were directly regulated by Austria, which maintained military occupation there until 1855. Before the outbreak of the war of 1859 Cavour offered the Grand Duke of Tuscany the guarantee of Piedmont in exchange for an alliance. Leopold’s refusal aroused disappointment and ill-feeling in the army and drove the liberals into action. On 27 April the Grand Duke was forced to leave the State. A provisional government was formed under Ubaldino Peruzzi, which offered Vittorio Emanuele II the dictatorship for the duration of the conflict. Napoleon III’s veto compelled the King to limit his consent to a temporary protectorate, sending Carlo Boncompagni (q.v.) as his commissioner to Tuscany. But the Tuscan government, directed by Bettino Ricasoli, maintained the principle of unity, also thwarting a plan by Napoleon III to establish a kingdom of Central Italy to be assigned to his cousin Jérôme; and when the Armistice of Villafranca obliged Vittorio Emanuele to recall his commissioner, it convened a representative assembly that voted for union with the Kingdom of Sardinia, a union confirmed by the plebiscite of 15 March. Thus, when the new session of the Subalpine Parliament opened on 2 April, the representatives of Tuscany were also present.

III. TUSCAN REGIONAL COUNCIL — One of the regions into which Italy was divided by decrees of the Sacred Consistorial Congregation of 15 February and 22 March 1919, and 29 September 1933 (AAS, 11 [1919], pp. 72-74, 176; 25 [1933], p. 466) for the purpose of holding regional councils in place of provincial councils (q.V. COUNCIL, IV).

It comprises the territories of the ecclesiastical provinces of Florence, Pisa and Siena, and also the archdiocese of Lucca, the dioceses of Arezzo, Cortona, Montalcino, Montepulciano, Pienza and the abbacy *nullius* of Monte Oliveto Maggiore.

In the regional capital (Florence) is seated the regional tribunal for causes of nullity of marriage; it also functions as an appellate tribunal for cases judged in first instance by the tribunals of the Umbrian (Perugia) and Marches (Fermo) regions. Appeals against the sentences of the Etruscan regional tribunal are to be brought before the tribunal of the Romagna region (Bologna) or the Sacred Roman Rota (cf. Pius XI, motu proprio *Qua cura* of 8 December 1938, in AAS, 30 [1938], pp. 410-13).

IV. ART

The artistic importance of Tuscany has been pre-eminent in the peninsula since antiquity. Indeed, this region’s singular privilege has been to achieve, at two widely separated periods centuries apart, the capacity to rise to an unquestioned primacy of culture, creating two original civilizations of great power of expansion and penetration.

Thus, in antiquity, the forms of Etruscan art guided the earliest Roman artistic production; and to that substratum even the more advanced imperial art remained faithful, preserving—while undergoing Hellenistic influence—the caustic sense of psychological characterization that distinguishes native portraiture from the Greek. Similarly, in the 14th century—when, spurred by its industrious cities, Tuscany assumed a pre-eminent economic position in Europe—it expressed in the Giottesque idiom a legacy common to several generations of painters throughout the peninsula, not without repercussions even within the refined ambit of Byzantine culture. Parallel to this, through Simone Martini, interpreter of Sienese linear sensibility, it influenced Gothic style. But it is the Renaissance, heralded by these painters, that was destined to consecrate Tuscany’s primacy, marking one of the most important turning points in European civilization and customs. It may well be said that modern culture in its most diverse creative expressions has its origins in Tuscan Humanism; and even in the fundamental conceptions that governed human affairs for several centuries, it depends directly or indirectly upon that movement. As is natural, the most outstanding results were achieved in Italy; so much so that it would be quite impossible to outline a profile of the artistic history of our country without taking Tuscan contributions into account (see the entry ITALY, VI. Art).

In the field of the figurative arts, the concept of Tuscan culture does not, as in literature, consecrate the primacy of one city over the others. If the few testimonies prior to the year 1000 (the cathedral of Chiusi, the Pieve of Arliano, the crypts of S. Antimo, S. Salvatore al Monte Amiata, S. Baronto, S. Salvatore in Agna) do not permit a sure judgment of a period that appears generically dominated by the activity of the Comacine masters, subsequently every province had flourishing schools distinctly characterized and separate in conception, form and results; nor can it be affirmed that Florence held the pre-eminence before the appearance of Giotto.

Florentine Romanesque architecture (q.V. FLORENCE), faithful to the spirit of Paleochristian forms in its prototypes (the Baptistery, S. Miniato al Monte, SS. Apostoli), had in fact a very limited expansion (no further than Impruneta and its Pieve); whereas the styles of Pisan-Lucchese architecture (q.V. PISA; LUCCA), reconciling Lombard premises with Eastern decorative suggestions, spread rapidly throughout Tuscany from Pistoia to S. Quirico d’Orcia and exerted influence even beyond the region’s boundaries—directly in Sardinia (q.v.) and indirectly in other parts of Italy (the question of Pisan mediation in some interesting constructions of Capitanata, from Manfredonia to Troia, remains controversial).

Similarly, sculpture had its major centers among Lucca, Pisa, and Arezzo, cities in which Lombard-Emilian influence was initially very strong due to the presence of artists from those regions (Guglielmo and Bonamico in Pisa; Biduino in Lucca; Gruamone and Guido da Como in Pistoia; Giroldo da Como in Massa Marittima; Marchionne in Arezzo). Yet a true plastic renaissance would originate in the environment of the Pisan workshops, through the work of Nicola (q.v.), who may rightly be considered Tuscan, whatever his place of origin may have been, since it was in the conditions of Tuscan culture that he found the ideal terms to express his message.

Thus in painting, Pisa, which boasts Giunta (q.v.) as a

personality of great strength, as is demonstrated by the wide diffusion of his manner in central Italy; Lucca with the Berlinghieri and Arezzo with Margaritone already by the 13th century stand as centers of an expression still outwardly linked to the Byzantine substratum in its iconographic structure, but already moving toward the conquest of a new plastic-pictorial sensibility, even before Florence. Coppo di Marcovaldo (q.v.) and Cimabue (q.v.) lay the foundations for the affirmation of Giotto. It is true that Pisa, Lucca, Arezzo, and Pistoia would soon yield to Florentine preeminence, but Siena, rising more slowly and initially indebted even to Pisa and Florence, would later stake its claim to regional supremacy, which would fade only with the triumph of the Renaissance.

The capacity for reaction now possessed by the Tuscan environment, through its acquired sense of value, is amply demonstrated by the transformation undergone by Gothic architecture in Pisa, Lucca, and Siena, but above all in Florence, where the ultramontane Gothic imported by the Cistercians remained a limited episode confined to certain peripheral abbeys (S. Galgano, S. Salvatore a Settimo); while the inflections of its language determined new characteristics in the structures of the strong local Romanesque tradition, also establishing some fundamental aspects of Renaissance art.

The situation in the other arts appears no different, even if the dramatic force of a Giovanni Pisano seems more willingly to adhere to the lesson of transalpine Gothic. The Pisan-Sienese school, whose greatest exponents were the sculptors who followed and were pupils of Nicola—from Tino da Camaino (q.v.) to Nino Pisano (q.v.)—now faced a Florentine school, with Arnolfo di Cambio and Andrea da Pontedera, intent on accentuating a break from Gothic linearism, favoring forms of more substantial plasticity. The pictorial vision of Giotto, like that of Ambrogio Lorenzetti or Maestro Stefano, took account of a rediscovered human proportion, for which the term naturalism was already proposed. But his followers (q.v., e.g., under the entries GADDI) strove to interpret it in increasingly discursive and graceful forms, softening that essential and rugged character which had been Giotto’s greatest achievement. Thus the second half of the 14th century seems to mark a triumph of grace, breaking in upon the Giottesque iconography now diffused everywhere. This eclecticism embraced both sculpture and painting (from the Orcagna to Andrea di Firenze, Agnolo Gaddi, Spinello Aretino, Francesco Traini, Giovanni da Milano, Antonio Veneziano) and would exhaust itself in ever more weary repetitions until the dazzling and revolutionary advent of Filippo Brunelleschi (q.v.), Masaccio (q.v.), and Donatello (q.v.), who, each in his own artistic domain, would impose the new Renaissance vision.

Meanwhile, painters such as Piero della Francesca, destined to spread the new language into Umbria, the Marches, Emilia, and Lazio, as well as delightful and brilliant illuminators like Benozzo Gozzoli and, in Siena, Domenico di Bartolo, were active. At the same time, Filippo Lippi, Andrea del Castagno, and, to a lesser degree, Alessio Baldovinetti, steered Florentine painting toward those solutions of dynamic linearism that characterize the second half of the century in the work of Antonio and Pietro Pollaiuolo, Andrea del Verrocchio, and above all Sandro Botticelli. To the detached composure of the early Renaissance was now being substituted a restlessness and dramatic tension, especially in the figurative cycles of Luca Signorelli of Cortona, which prepared the ground for Michelangelo’s harrowing investigations. The approach to the grandeur of 16th-century conceptions meanwhile occurred toward the end of the century, through contacts and exchanges that broadened the horizon of Florentine culture, when Flemish works of art flowed into the city and artists from every quarter, even the greatest (such as the Umbrian Perugino or the Marchesian Raphael), came to learn the Florentine lesson and to contribute their own original solutions.

Meanwhile, Siena lingered in refined and precious chromatic researches with Stefano di Giovanni, called il Sassetta, Giovanni di Paolo, and Sano di Pietro, engaged—as Brandi writes—“in a continual struggle between exuberant interiority and an outdated culture.” A distortion of Florentine forms is found in artists more eager for novelty, such as Matteo di Giovanni, Noccio di Lando, and Francesco di Giorgio Martini, the last of whom was more receptive than the others to the teachings of Lippi and Baldovinetti.

The mediation between the 15th and 16th centuries in Florence is represented by artists such as Fra Bartolomeo, Ghirlandaio, Filippino Lippi, Piero di Cosimo, and Francesco Bugiardini; but it is certain that the enunciation of the new artistic language belongs to Leonardo and Michelangelo, typically Tuscan geniuses to whom Raphael is added at the summit of that parabola that had begun with Giotto. Leonardo’s influence is not widely felt in Tuscany: his chiaroscuro is perhaps discernible only in the works of Filippino Lippi and Piero di Cosimo. Yet through him Tuscan culture first asserted itself in Lombardy and then in France.

In the 16th century, Florence ceded its national primacy to Rome, which drew upon the best Tuscan artists, inducing them to lengthy and fruitful sojourns. But even if the axis of attraction now shifted from the Arno to the Tiber, Tuscany long remained active, expressing in the first mannerist masters another moment of fruitful productivity, to which architecture contributed with the prototypes of Michelangelo and Raphael, inspiring Mariotto Fofi, Bartolomeo Ammannati, Bernardo Buontalenti, Giovanni Battista Dosio, Giorgio Vasari, and Baccio d’Agnolo; in Siena, Baldassarre Peruzzi; in Lucca, Francesco Marti.

Sculpture had its principal innovator in Andrea Sansovino, while Benedetto da Rovezzano, Andrea Ferrucci, Baccio di Montelupo, and Francesco Rustici were also active; yet Michelangelo’s influence soon became almost exclusive for Raffaello da Montelupo, Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli, and indeed overwhelming for Vincenzo de’ Rossi. Other masters, while maintaining a certain ease and independence of style despite their intellectual eclecticism, include Jacopo Sansovino, Tribolo, Ammannati, Benvenuto Cellini, Lorenzetto, Vincenzo Danti, Taddeo Landini, Francesco da Sangallo, and Giovanni della Opera. The century would close on a high note with the production of Pietro Tacca and Giovanni Caccini and the foreigners Pietro Francavilla and Giambologna. In Pisa, Stoldo Lorenzi gained prominence; in Versilia, the Stagi family worked; in Siena, Lorenzo Marrina; in Arezzo, Simone Mosca.

TUSCANY - Cantoria of the Collegiate Church of Impruneta (16th cent.), near Florence.

For painting: G. Poggi, La pittura toscana del Trecento, Florence 1935; R. van Marle, op. cit.; M. Salmi, Pittura toscana del Quattrocento, Florence 1940; A. Venturi, op. cit.; G. Vasari, op. cit.

The 15th century thus emerges as Florence’s great century. The unitary coherence of the concepts informing the new culture (v. the entries FIRENZE; RINASCIMENTO; UMANESIMO, etc) found an extraordinarily effective affirmation because it was able to marshal a large cohort of master craftsmen and to stimulate their most compelling and original achievements in a dizzying succession of commissions and works. For architecture we may recall Michelozzo, Giuliano and Benedetto da Maiano, Andrea Cavalcanti, Simone Pollaiolo called il Cronaca, Giuliano and Antonio da Sangallo the Elder, Ventura Vitoni—all operating within the orbit of Brunelleschi—then L. B. Alberti and Bernardo Rossellino; outside Florence, Antonio Federighi, Francesco di Giorgio Martini (from Siena), Matteo Civitali (from Lucca); among sculptors, Niccolò Lamberti and his son Piero, Bernardo Ciuffagni and Nanni di Bartolo, still torn between old and new; then Nanni di Banco, Brunelleschi, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Luca, Andrea and Giovanni della Robbia, who popularized glazed terracotta, Bernardo and Antonio Rossellino, Desiderio da Settignano, Agostino di Duccio, Mino da Fiesole, Benedetto da Maiano, the goldsmiths and bronze-casters Antonio Pollaiuolo and Andrea del Verrocchio, as well as the Sienese Jacopo della Quercia, Giovanni Turini, Antonio Federighi, Lorenzo di Pietro called il Vecchietta, Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Nereccio di Bartolomeo, Giacomo Cozzarelli and the Lucchese Matteo Civitali. Around them stand pupils and provincial artists (such as Pagno di Lapo, Urbano da Cortona, Simone Strini, Bertoldo, Bellano, Pietro Torrigiani, etc.) capable, in moments of inspiration, of producing works not unworthy of their masters. Outside Florence, in this transitional period, certain painters (Pisanello, Masolino da Panicale, etc.) were important for the influence their presence exerted on the early Renaissance development of local schools, for example in Lombardy and Verona. But in Florence, from Paolo Uccello to the Blessed Angelico, to Domenico Veneziano, the first Renaissance masters fell under the spell of Masaccio’s vision of the stories in the Carmine.

Tuscany – Cantoria of the Collegiate Church of Impruneta (16th century), near Florence.

Tuscany – *La manna*. Painting by J. del Sellaio (c. mid-15th century) – Berlin, Private Collection.

Among the painters, while Albertinelli remained faithful to Fra Bartolomeo’s lesson and Francesco Granacci repeated Ghirlandaio’s schemes, Andrea del Sarto attempted a rapprochement with the tonal modes of Venetian painting. Pontormo and Rosso excelled as original and disconcerting personalities of a positive Mannerism, before the Raphaelesque and Michelangelesque imitation ushered in the labored academic Mannerism of Giorgio Vasari, Alessandro Allori, Francesco Bacchiacca, Franciabigio—from which only Francesco Salviati and Bernardino Poccetti emerged as decorators, and Angelo Allori, called Bronzino, as a portraitist. At the century’s close, Santi di Tito attempted a return to the sources, with little success.

Outside Tuscany the finest artist to emerge from the Michelangelesque school is undoubtedly Daniele da Volterra. In Siena there was a marked opening toward Umbria rather than toward Florence. Its exponents were Bernardo Fungai, Gerolamo del Pacchia and Andrea del Bresciano. Peruzzi brought the Raphaelesque word, later triumphantly reinforced in the Leonardesque conjunction by the Piedmontese Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, called Sodoma, who became a naturalized Sienese. Domenico Beccafumi, the most original artist of 16th-century Siena, worked in isolation on a search for new expressive modes that recalls Pontormo and Rosso. The Mannerism of Ventura Salimbeni prepared the now-exhausted local school for the irruption of the Baroque. With the century’s end the productive cycle of Tuscan art seemed irretrievably closed. The region, still a source of creative energy in the Cinquecento, failed to maintain the same propulsive force and, exhausted, inevitably became a tributary province in the two succeeding centuries of the major Baroque centers—Rome, Naples and Bologna. Among architects in the 17th century no outstanding personalities appear. From Matteo Nigetti, pupil of Buontalenti, to Don Giovanni de’ Medici, Gherardo Silvani, Lodovico Cardi called Cigoli, Zanobi del Rosso and Ferdinando Ruggeri, no advance was made beyond the cultural positions of late Mannerism, or the Berninesque Baroque was translated into academic formulas.

Sculpture fared even worse. The few artists of merit sought elsewhere, especially in Rome, to adapt to the new demands of taste (for example, Agostino Cornacchini, and in the 18th century Filippo della Valle). The most fortunate, Francesco Fancelli, became court sculptor in London. Only toward the end of the 17th and in the 18th centuries did artists such as Battista Foggini and the Roman Innocenzo Spinazzi, a teacher at the Florentine Academy, attempt to revive sculpture, though without escaping a dignified eclecticism. A similar exodus to Rome occurred among the most capable Florentine painters, such as Cigoli, Domenico Cresti called Passignano, Giovanni da San Giovanni, then Luti, Conti and Redi. Some renown at home was enjoyed by Jacopo Chimenti called l’Empoli, Matteo Rosselli, Baldassare Franceschini called il Volterrano, Carlo Dolci, Francesco Furini and Lorenzo Lippi. For major decorative undertakings Florence preferred to summon the Veronese Jacopo Lippo, Pietro da Cortona, Luca Giordano and, at the start of the 18th century, the Venetian Sebastiano Ricci. Siena’s situation was identical: its best pupils of the eclectic Salimbeni—Alessandro Casolani, Pietro Sorri, Ventura Salimbeni, Francesco Vanni—fled to Rome, Genoa, Pavia and Florence. More gifted than the others in his Caravaggesque phase was Rutilio Manetti, active in his native city as well. From Lucca, where Pietro Paolini worked, Giovanni Coli, Filippo Gherardi and Pietro Testa called il Lucchesino went to Rome in the train of Pietro da Cortona, who also animated a lively school in his native city. Pistoia supplied Rome with Giacomo Giminiani and Lazzaro Baldi, and Pisa with Orazio Gentileschi and Orazio Riminaldi.

Neoclassicism, with Gaspare M. Paoletti, Pasquale Poccianti and Gaetano Baccani, produced in Florence works not unworthy of the great local building tradition. In the second half of the 19th century, during the urban renewal that followed Italian unification, Giuseppe Poggi rose above the rest as the designer of the hillside promenade and Piazzale Michelangelo in Florence. In sculpture the general rule was Canovian imitation until Luigi Bartolini launched a discreet anti-classical reaction with his return to nature, inaugurating the Romantic season. His Tuscan pupils—Luigi Pampaloni, Pio Fedi, Raffaello Romanelli—were feeble, but his manner had wide resonance elsewhere, especially influencing Vincenzo Vela. The finest Tuscan Romanticism is represented by A. Cecioni, a spontaneous artist who waged a fierce battle against the Academy as embodied in Florence by G. Dupré. In painting, Florence re-emerged in the 19th century as a vanguard, both in the early Neoclassical period through Pietro Benvenuti and Luigi Sabatelli and in the heyday of historical and genre painting with Giuseppe Bezzuoli, Antonio Ciseri, Antonio Puccinelli and Stefano Ussi. Yet it was with the Macchiaioli movement that

Tuscany – *La manna*. Painting by J. del Sellaio (2nd half of the 15th century) – Berlin, Private Collection.

Tuscany – Clement VII creates Cardinal Ippolito de’ Medici and sends him as legate to Umbria. Frescoes by G. Vasari in the Sala di Clemente VII (2nd half of the 16th century) – Florence, Palazzo Vecchio.

that Tuscany regains national primacy. Masters such as the Livornese Giovanni Fattori, the Modiglianese Silvestro Lega, and the Florentine Telemaco Signorini rank among the most interesting personalities of the century, even beyond national boundaries. Around them, pursuing the same programme of fidelity to inner aspiration for the conquest of artistic freedom—which is above all an awareness of the visual values of painting—in a climate akin to that of French Impressionism, artists are drawn from every part of Italy; but mainly Tuscans, such as the aforementioned Cecioni, who was the theorist of the group, the Livornese Serafino de’ Tivoli, the Florentines Cristiano Banti and Raffaele Sarnesi, and the Pisan Odoardo Borrani. These artists prefer profane subjects, and thus their contribution to sacred art is scant. The legacy of the Macchiaioli remains alive and operative in the region even into the Divisionist period and later into Cubism and Futurism. Contemporary Italian painting sees in the front rank several Tuscan masters who have passed through various avant-garde experiences but have remained substantially faithful to that commitment to reality and nature which is characteristic of Tuscan tradition. We may cite the Livornese Amedeo Modigliani, who lived in Paris, the Versilian Lorenzo Viani, the Florentines Ardengo Soffici and Ottone Rosai, and the Cortonan Gino Severini. Sculpture has had in Libero Andreotti an artist sensitive to the stimuli of modernity, interpreted with a fragile and snapping quality like that of the ancient Sienese masters.

Of modern urban renewal Tuscany possesses some prototypes that enter into the heart of current controversies, such as the Santa Maria Novella railway station in Florence, designed by a group of Florentine architects led by Giovanni Michelucci.

A profile of the minor arts is not drawn here; for these we refer to the individual entries (ARAZZO; CERAMICA; FERRO BATTUTO; INCISIONE; MOSAICO; OREFICERIA; RICAMO; TARSIA, etc.); we shall merely recall how Siena, Florence, Lucca, and Arezzo may boast of having at every moment fostered flourishing schools, to whose growth even supreme artists and renowned artisan workshops contributed.

V. FOLKLORE

Tuscany represents, with regard to popular literature, a most vital zone of production and dissemination. One of the most important forms of monostrophic lyric song, the rispetto, arose in Tuscany; although it has the same number and length of verses, it differs from the Sicilian ottava in rhyme and stylistic procedure: whereas in the canzuna (ab ab ab ab) the idea unfolds freely throughout the song, in the rispetto (ab ab cc dd) it must be condensed into the quatrain with alternating rhymes, and then reiterated in the refrains on the point of greatest importance; or else it may hint at external circumstances in the first part, only to reveal the true sentiment in the second. The rondinella is, musically, the finest Tuscan rispetto. The stornello is also extremely flourishing in Tuscany. Rispetti and stornelli are usually sung interspersed with a refrain, also called rifiorito, consisting of a two- or four-line stanza. Among the principal forms of Italian popular poetry that have flowed into Tuscany and remained widely traditional is the epic-lyric song, preserved both in its original French metrical form (i.e., verses ordinarily divided into two equal or unequal members, linked by assonance more than rhyme, in strophes often complicated in appearance by repetition of lines or hemistichs and by the refrain) and in a deeply transformed metre, later diffused in this new form towards Veneto on one side and towards central Italy and Sardinia on the other. Besides the better-known songs of this kind, La donna lombarda, Cecilia, etc., rarer ones are documented, such as La fanciulla del mare, La sposa di Susa, L’innamorato timido, and L’amante trascurata. From Piedmont there descend into Tuscany also epic-lyric songs of religious subject (e.g., Maria Maddalena, and beginning with S. Barbara), while from central Italy come—and are never preserved—narrative religious songs in hendecasyllables; but more widely diffused among the people are stories in ottave. Numerous are the testimonies of enumerative or iterative songs: La mosca mora, Bella che vai al mercè?, Chi l’ha mangiata la testa, la testa dell’anitra mia? A wide documentation of all this material is provided by the manuscript collection assembled, with sure and precise criteria of inquiry and selection and with continuous examination of critical and historical problems, by Michele Barbi, generally designated by the sigla RB; a multi-volume edition is in preparation under the direction of V. Santoli, P. Toschi, and G. Vidossi.

Of considerable importance is the Tuscan folk theatre. There survive, elevated to true performances, traditional dramatic forms born of popular festivals and ceremonies, such as the maggio, the bruschello, the befanata, the zingaresca, and the testamento. The dramatic maggio, almost entirely written in quatrains of octonaries, deals with religious, historical, and romantic subjects, and has remained confined to the peasants of Lucca, Pistoia, Pisa, and Volterra; the maggio arti are very brief and lacking in action, resembling in this the bruscelli, though offering a greater variety of metre. The bruscello, written in octaves or sestets, derives its name from a small tree or branch of laurel, holm-oak, or pine, adorned with ribbons and flowers, which is always carried by one of the company and then planted in the ground, forming the centre of the popular performance: its subjects, besides that of the hunt (the origin of this farce is traced by some to certain masquerades that took place in the Sienese countryside about four centuries ago, in which a kind of nocturnal hunt was mimed with a lantern hung from a branch planted in the ground, which was precisely called a bruscello), may be the rivalry between a young man and an old man for the hand of a girl (this form is found, under various names, even outside Tuscany), or legendary and historical episodes, such as the Destruction of Troy, Pia de’ Tolomei, the Italians in Africa, etc. The befanate, whether religious or secular, in little stanzas of four octonaries, mostly with crossed rhymes, are sung in the Lucchese countryside by groups of young men, in the streets of the village in front of the houses of the wealthier inhabitants, in one or two choirs, accompanied by violin or barrel organ. Written in stanzas of four lines—three heptameters and a fifth—rhyming the second with the third, and the fourth with the first line of the following stanza—the zingaresca and the testamento—resemble each other in plot and in the nature of the characters who take part; except that in the zingaresca the leading role is always played by a gypsy woman, who uses her magical art to help unhappy lovers, removing by her spells the obstacles that stood in the way of their marriage; ... whereas in the testamento the comic element is provided by the ridiculous figure of the doctor (notary) and by the parody of wills or marriage contracts (Giannini). All these performances are connected with carnival or spring festivals and have the significance of rites of expulsion and propitiation. On Ascension Day two of the gayest festivals of the spring season are held: that of the cricket in Florence and that of the flask in Montemaitia, the latter so called because many young men wear around their necks a flask full of wine. The patronal festivals and calendar festivals in general are celebrated with great splendour, and in them there can almost always be discerned ritual elements proper to cyclical ceremonies: mention may be made of the feast of St John in Florence, with its pompous processions and allegorical floats, in which representatives of the various city guilds take part; the Florentine feast of the bonfires (rifocolone), dedicated to the Nativity of Mary (8 Sept.); that of St Ranieri in Pisa, famous for the imposing illumination (luminara) along the Arno; and that of the Holy Cross in Lucca, where an extremely ancient image of the crucified Jesus is exposed for the veneration of the faithful, said, according to legend, to have been made by Nicodemus. Finally, the most celebrated are the festivals held in Siena on 2 July for the Visitation and 15 Aug. for the Assumption of Mary, on which occasions the traditional palio is run. Of this, on the basis of an ethnographic comparison with ancient rites of the beginning of the annual and seasonal cycle—one of the principal elements of which is precisely the representation of a contest or struggle, a race or armed duel—it is possible to discern the original ritual significance and propitiatory character, which it has not entirely lost, even though it has become historicised and adapted to the new environment: thus the Carroccio, the procession of the 17 contrade with their respective military captains, betrays the primitive sacred and warlike character of the festival, while the display of costumes, the waving of flags, and the decoration of the carroccio itself give the event a notable spectacular colouring. Other famous festivals show a similar ritualistic significance and spectacular colour, such as the joust of the Saracen, held at Arezzo on the day of St Donatus (7 Aug.), patron of the city, and the game of the bridge at Pisa, which is historically traced back to the Lombard period. Even in the scene of the explosion of the cart (scoppio del carro), which takes place on the morning of Holy Saturday in Florence, one can recognise in the fire the most ancient ritual element, overlaid by the legendary motif that links its origin to the Holy Sepulchre: the Florentine tradition holds that the first spark of the sacred fire was once produced by three small pieces of stone taken from the Sepulchre of Christ and brought to Florence by Messer Pazzino de’ Pazzi; and the rite becomes a spectacle with the invention of the cart (common, moreover, to all sacred festivals) and the kindling of the fire by means of the colombina, which, symbol of the Holy Spirit, moves from the high altar at the very moment of the Resurrection, running along a wire; and from the behaviour of the colombina and the manner in which the cart explodes, the Tuscan peasants who flock to the Piazza del Duomo in Florence draw their omens for the harvests, the feast of Easter being also a festival of the beginning of the season.

Among the customs that mark the cycle of human life, some deserve particular mention either for the singularity of certain elements or for comparison with those of other regions. In much of Tuscany in the past, and still in some villages today, it is customary to hold a lavish meal a few days after a baptism, attended by the mother of the newborn, called in Florentine and Pisan usage *scapponata* because originally all the dishes consisted of capon meat; in Arezzo it is called *cicalio*, in Pian di Lucca *l'impagliata*, and in Rosignano Marittimo *il riconoscimento* because, with gifts of eggs and poultry, the guests officially acknowledge the new social status of the mother. The marriage proposal (*chiesta*) is generally made through the *cozzone* or marriage intermediary. Picturesque in the flat hills and surroundings of Siena is the scene of the transport of the bride’s trousseau, on the eve of the wedding, on a cart pulled by oxen adorned with ribbons and *songali*; no less picturesquely, in the area around Barga, the trousseau is carried in uncovered baskets, borne on the heads of young women who advance in procession. In some villages the custom of the *serraglio* or parade survives, once widespread throughout almost all of Tuscany, consisting in blocking the path of the bride and groom with ribbons that were then removed for a fee in money or a gift of sweets; in the Lucchese area the *serraglio* was performed only when the bride was leaving the village, and in that case the impediment solemnized a rite of passage in a material sense.

In Sienese comedies and various sixteenth-century memoirs, in the Tuscan synodal constitutions, and even in some almanacs of the last century, old customs of considerable ethnographic interest are documented; these are still alive and observed in the current tradition of the common people in other countries and regions: the *toccamano*, a ritual form well known in Italy (v. ROMAGNA) and widespread in France; the kiss of the bride in church, which in Sardinia corresponds to the ceremony of the bride’s embrace by the groom and his companions; the breaking of the bowl, a vestige of a magical ceremony (*potus et biberagium*) practiced to strengthen affectionate bonds, which in other places is replaced by the breaking of the wedding cake or even a cinnamon stick to confirm the marriage oath before the notary; the punch given to the groom during the wedding celebration, specifically at the moment of the blessing when he declares his assent, which appears in many pictorial representations of the espousals of the Madonna (v. , for example, the painting by the Blessed Angelico in the Uffizi Gallery and by Giotto in the Scrovegni Chapel): this last rite, which is traced back to Roman *emancipatio* and *manumissio*, has so far been found in Italy only in Romagna, and some traces in Lombardy, but it is perhaps not far from the truth to connect to it the very widespread custom of a friendly greeting with a blow on the shoulder. In the districts of Lucca and Pistoia the custom of the *scampanata* for widowers who remarry persists. Among funeral rites, the one still in use until a few years ago in the Lucchese mountains is noteworthy: children who died before the age of seven were carried to the cemetery in a basket adorned with ribbons and borne on the head of a young girl.

Elements useful for characterizing Tuscany folklorically are provided by the lives of peasants and shepherds: their clothing, household objects, and work tools, of which fine specimens from the Lunigiana are preserved in the Civic Museum of La Spezia, constitute documents of considerable ethnographic-comparative interest. For example, the short trousers of the costume of Biassa, the woolen gaiters used in the Portovenere mountains, and the woolen cap with two colors, black inside and red outside, folded over the ear, closely resemble particular features of the male costume of Sardinia and Corsica. The *buccina* made from *Tritonjum nodiferum*, which until recently in Montelongo was used in place of bells from Holy Thursday to Holy Saturday to call the faithful to church, and formerly by the Apuan shepherds to frighten wolves with its sound, while today it is used for the *scampanata* (and in the upper Magra Valley millers use it to warn farmers that they need to grind), is also found among the most common objects used by Corsican shepherds. Finally, the wine horn—a cow’s horn emptied, closed at the base, and pierced at the tip, which the peasants of Veppo carry across their shoulders—is singular.

In the distribution of the main forms of rural houses, the type with an external staircase, with living quarters above the farm buildings (cellar, storerooms, etc.), is dominant, especially south of the Arno and on the island of Elba, and thus appears to be very ancient and to have once had a very wide diffusion. — See plates XXXV-XXXVIII.

Giovanni Bronzini