Seeds for the Flowers of Tuscany

Abstract

C OMMONLY it is said that Western culture had its rebirth in Tuscany during the fourteenth succeeding centuries. This is a reasonable statement if one remembers that Renaissance flowers did not spring up in a patch of weeds but came from cultivated stocks in a soil long tilled fertilized. In Florence, a half century ago, at the first national congress of Etruscologists, one speaker exhorted the assembly never to forget that the homeland of the Renaissance was also the region of the Etruscans. Since the time of his admonition archaeologists have produced information to justify the further statement, and that of even earlier cultures. If the natives of that territory were excluded from Italian culture historyincluding agriculture, engineering, metallurgy, architecture, urbanism, the fine arts-the record would be drastically shortened. Recognizing that fact, a geographer must ask the question What inheres in this region that has, in several periods of time, pulsed with creative energy? Too often has vigorous growth appeared on this soil, in this air of Tuscany, for one to doubt cultural congeniality. Is there a repetitive afflatus here? Are certain techniques attitudes with inherent affinities for each other so germane to a given physical situation that even after long desuetude resulting from war, economic collapse, or any number of other reasons, they will be reborn if the social ambience again becomes meet? Or is such repetitive flowering the product of deeply rooted, periodically dormant plants? Or is it a matter of coincidence? An understanding of the phenomenon is elusive, largely because one can no more define the genius of Tuscany by attempting to give a list of its qualities than one can parse Dante to a similar purpose; but possibly understanding may be furthered by recognizing the recurrence encouragement of productive individualism. Tuscans, Tuscan cities, formed personalities according to their own prescriptions; yet all have been parts of a recognizable unit (Fig. i). Personal urban traits of character, stimulating diversity yet creating unity, seem to have been present for 3,000 years in this portion of land, unique in its physiognomy, to which its inhabitants, more like each other than like other Italians, are emotionally intellectually bound. A historical geographer must decide on a period of time to which he will confine his inquiries. His decision is based on the presence or absence of pertinent material. In Tuscany that terminus ante quem seems to be the period of full development of Etruscan culture. Who the Etruscans were... where they came from, when they arrived, if they arrived was unknown to Luisa Banti;' one who knows so much less about the matter than she must leave it there. The items contributed to