Passo passo dietro il Lanzi a Perugia (1777-1794): dalla prima lettura al progetto di una nuova edizione del Saggio di Lingua Etrusca

The Lanzi manuscripts, which include the travel notes, conserved in the Uffizi Library of Florence and utilised as from the 19th century above all in the archaeological epigraphic field since the times of Ariodante Fabretti and in the volumes of the CIE and CIL, served as preparation for the Study on the Etruscan language. On his visits to the various places, Abbot Lanzi would begin with the cathedral or major church and the public museum, going on, then, to the monasteries, convents and palazzi, painstakingly listing archaeological objects and paintings, fulfilling his new tasks as Royal Antiquarian for Pietro Leopoldo di Lorena to the best of his ability. He took the Museum of Florence as benchmark for all the sets of objects, whether they were represented there or not. Lanzi’s ceaseless research, continuing well beyond the first publication of his major work, the ‘Saggio’, is evidenced by the “Catalogue of corrections and additions”, an appendix to the 2nd volume of the 1st edition: he corrected his texts and added epigraphs which came to his attention when the book was already in press. In Ms36,10 dedicated to a journey made in 1794, when he returned to Umbria, to Perugia, he cites epigraphs that add to or cast new light on those presented in the Saggio in 1789; he was evidently intending to complete and update it for a new edition, as he had done for the History of Painting. The second edition, published posthumously, makes no changes to the first. Lanzi had already been in Umbria on a number of occasions and recorded a number of Perugia’s collections in the Saggio, which he returned to with updating, revision and corrections, presenting epigraphs hitherto considered later finds.
Lanzi demonstrates that study of the Etruscan language had never lapsed.