Guelphs, Ghibellines and Etruscans: Archaeological Discoveries and Civic Identity in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Tuscany

This paper examines the rediscovery of the ancient Etruscans, incentral Italy, during the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries AD. Knowledgeabout the Etruscans from this earlier period was overshadowed by the interest inEtruscan antiquities promoted by Pope Leo X (1513–1521) and Cosimo I de Medici(1519–1574) during the late Renaissance. I argue that the sixteenth centuryappropriation of the Etruscan past would not have been possible without the discoveriesof earlier generations of Tuscans, and, more particularly, without a reversal inattitudes towards the Etruscan past that began during the late thirteenth century. Priorto this, the Etruscans were perceived negatively, as allied to darkness and paganism. Inthis paper, I argue that this change in the perception of the Etruscans was closelyallied to the particular political situation of the city-state of Florence, and that theorigins of Etruscan archaeology can be elucidated in the centre of the maelstrom of war,famine and plague that characterised the fourteenth century in central Italy