Filippo Buonarroti (18 November 1661 in

Florence Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence ...

– 10 December 1733 in Florence), the great-grandnephew of

Michelangelo Buonarroti Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6March 147518February 1564), known mononymously as Michelangelo, was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was inspi ...

, was an

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

official at the court of Cosimo III, Grand Duke of Tuscany and an

antiquarian An antiquarian or antiquary () is an aficionado or student of antiquities or things of the past. More specifically, the term is used for those who study history with particular attention to ancient artefacts, archaeological and historic si ...

, whose Etruscan studies, among the earliest in that field, inspired Antonio Francesco Gori. The Etruscan art and antiquities in the family palazzo-museum of Florence,

Casa Buonarroti Casa Buonarroti is a museum in Florence, Italy that is situated on property owned by the sculptor Michelangelo that he left to his nephew, Leonardo Buonarroti. The complex of buildings was converted into a museum dedicated to the artist by his gre ...

, are his contribution to the artistic-intellectual memorial to the Buonarroti.

Biography

Filippo Buonarroti pursued studies in law and exercised an early scientific curiosity. His early iconographic study of Imperial bronze coins and medals of Roman emperors in the collection of '' Cardinal Gasparo di Carpegna'', which he dedicated to Cosimo III, made his reputation as a scholar; it was published as ''Osservazioni Istoriche sopra alcuni medaglioni antichi all'Altezza Serenissima di Cosimo III Granduca di Toscana'' (Rome 1698) and contained thirty full-page engraved plates by Francesco Andreoni, all but one of coins. The books had its origins in Buonarroti's years 1684 to 1699 in Rome in the '' familia'' of Cardinal Carpegna, whom he served as secretary, conservator of collections and librarian. In 1699 Cosimo III recalled him to Tuscany and employed him as ''Auditore delle Riformagioni'', as minister of the ''Pratica'' of Pistoia, secretary of the Florentine ''Pratica'' and as a participant in a newly organised committee for jurisdictional affairs. In 1700 he was made a senator, a purely honorary role in the Medici Grand Duchy. He is remembered most for his pioneering study of

gold glass Gold glass or gold sandwich glass is a luxury form of glass where a decorative design in gold leaf is fused between two layers of glass. First found in Hellenistic Greece, it is especially characteristic of the Roman glass of the Late Roman Em ...

vessel bottoms used as grave-makers in the

Catacombs of Rome The Catacombs of Rome () are ancient catacombs, underground burial places in and around Rome, of which there are at least forty, some rediscovered since 1578, others even as late as the 1950s. There are more than fifty catacombs in the underg ...

, ''Osservazioni sopra alcuni frammenti di vasi antichi di vetro ornate di figure trovati nei cimiteri di Roma'' (1716), in which he made the extraordinary, almost proto-Romantic assertion that the aesthetic crudity of early Christian art, often remarked by connoisseurs of Roman arts, had served to intensify the piety of the worshipper, an early expression of feeling for primitive art. He updated and edited

Thomas Dempster Thomas Dempster (23 August 1579 – 6 September 1625) was a Scottish scholar and historian. Born into the aristocracy in Aberdeenshire, which comprises regions of both the Scottish highlands and the Scottish lowlands, he was sent abroad as a yo ...

's ''De Etruria regali'' (in eight volumes, 1723), a classic study of Etruscan art that had been written a century earlier by the Scottish scholar who was based in Pisa.See ''Seduzione etrusca : dai segreti di Holkham Hall alle meraviglie del British Museum'', a cura di Palolo Bruschetti, Bruno Gialluca, Paolo Giulierini, Suzanne Reynolds, Judith Swaddling, Milan, Skira, 2014. Buonarroti provided some of the engraved illustrations and in 1724 he published a commentary on the work.

Notes

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Buonarroti, Filippo 1661 births 1733 deaths Writers from Florence 17th-century Italian writers 18th-century Italian writers 18th-century Italian male writers Linguists of Etruscan Italian numismatists Writers from the Grand Duchy of Tuscany

Biography

Notes

Further reading

External links