- chapter 62: The reception of Etruscan culture –
remained unpublished for over a century. When Coke and Buonarroti started working
on the publication, the political conditions had changed dramatically. The problem
of the autonomy of the Tuscan state in the wake of the impending end of the Medici
dynasty after Cosimo III and his successor Gian Gastone had become a burning issue.
The publication of Dempster’s treatise can be seen as part of a broader trend of interest
in their own past by the Tuscan élites: as in the case of the coeval editions of sixteenth-
century Florentine historians, this interest was due to a sense of uncertainty that led them
to look back to the past in order to draw orientation principles for the present and the
future.^15 The issue of Etruria’s identity acquired a different fl avor in this context. This is
especially visible in Buonarroti’s appendix. Other than Dempster, Buonarroti explicitly
thematizes and discusses the question of what is Etruscan. At the same time, however, he
applies it not to the history of the region in its entirety or to its cities, but exclusively to
the artifacts. Apparently, the issue has lost its political connotations. As Buonarroti states
at the very beginning of the appendix, he wants to identify objects that are undoubtedly
Etruscan.^16 His aim, then, is both narrower and more specifi c – more specialized – than
Dempster’s one. To this effect he employs a whole array of criteria that range from the
fi ndspots of the artifacts to their inscriptions, and from style and decorative patterns
to iconographic peculiarities.^17 The fact that not all of his conclusions are correct – for
example, he believes he can prove that the vases found in the tombs of Italy are not Greek
but Etruscan – does not diminish the relevance of his endeavor. For the fi rst time the
issue of the Etruscan origins of the artifacts found on Etruscan ground is pursued in a
way that is not occasional or desultory. This attitude leads Buonarroti to quite remarkable
insights, such as the following:
It is likely that many Etruscan donaries and votive objects still exist but are hidden,
as it were, among those innumerable statuettes that are found everywhere in Etruria
and pertain to both the sacred and the domestic sphere, represent human beings as
well as animals, and are made of either bronze or terracotta. I am thinking especially
of the terracotta ones that were dug up few years ago near Viterbo and are kept in the
collection of the most excellent cardinal Gualtieri. Since they bear no inscriptions, it is
uncertain whether they pertain to the old Etruscans or to the more recent ones (incertum
an Etruscorum antiquorum sint, an potius recentiorum), that is, those who converted to
the Roman customs after the deduction of colonies and the attainment of Roman
citizenship.^18As this passage shows, the focus on the objects has led Buonarroti to almost inadvertently
raise and address a crucial theme such as that of the cultural Romanization of Etruria. In
other words, Buonarroti identifi es and expresses in clear terms the issue of identity that
Dempster never defi ned once and for all. The most relevant consequence of this sharper
focus is that the leading historiographic criterium for Buonarroti becomes distance
rather than continuity. This is nowhere more evident than with regard to the issue of
regality. Other than Dempster, Buonarroti thinks that the Etruscan cities were ruled by
magistrates and that there was no unifi ed monarchic state.^19 However, he does not criticize
his predecessor; rather, he ignores him. Despite appearances, this lack of interest in the
issue that had been at the core of Dempster’s project does not imply that the character
of the eighteenth-century enterprise was basically apolitical. On the contrary, the very
editorial format of the De Etruria regali displays a clear awareness of some of the most