CHAPTER SIXTY TWO

THE RECEPTION OF ETRUSCAN

CULTURE: DEMPSTER AND BUONARROTI

Francesco de Angelis

T

he publication of Thomas Dempster’s treatise De Etruria regali in 1726, promoted by
Thomas Coke and Filippo Buonarroti one century after the work had been composed,
is an event that not only marks the rebirth of the interest for Etruscan antiquities in the
eighteenth century, but also coincides with a more general renewal of antiquarianism in
Tuscany and in Italy. This renewal does not simply occur on the scholarly level but has
a strong political dimension. As the very title of the treatise suggests, its main aim is to
affi rm and celebrate the monarchic character of Etruria. The temporal distance separating
the editors of the work from its author adds a further layer of complexity, since neither
the intellectual nor the political conditions were the same in the seventeenth and in the
eighteenth century. This chapter intends to jointly examine these aspects, all of which are
important for our understanding of the genesis of Etruscan studies in the modern age.^1
Thomas Dempster (1579–1625), a Scottish jurist and scholar, had composed the De
Etruria regali upon commission of the Grand Duke of Tuscany Cosimo II de’ Medici
during his sojourn as professor of law in Pisa between 1616 and 1619, but he had left
Tuscany before publishing it. The manuscript stayed in Florence where it was purchased
in 1716 by the young Thomas Coke, future Earl of Leicester. Coke sent it back soon
afterwards, entrusting Filippo Buonarroti (1661–1733), senator of the Grand Duchy
and antiquarian, with the editorial work. The original text was articulated in seven
‘Books’: the fi rst one treated the origins, the inhabitants, and the religion of Etruria; the
second listed and discussed the Etruscan kings; in the third the inventions that could be
attributed to the Etruscans were examined; Books 4–6 described the cities of Etruria,
namely those that had not survived into the modern age (4), those still existing (5),
and those founded after the fall of the Roman empire (6); and Book 7, fi nally, was a
history of the Medici family through a series of short biographies. Buonarroti added to
Dempster’s text an apparatus of plates depicting Etruscan artifacts, both real and alleged.
These plates required in turn a bulky appendix of Explicationes et conjecturae written by the
senator himself.
The differences in method and scholarly approach between the two components of
the fi nal work are quite evident. While Dempster bases his analyses mainly on literary