Leghorn

Il "Nuovo Mercato delle Vettovaglie" di Livorno colpisce ancor oggi per la sua imponenza; si tratta di un edificio lungo quasi 100 m e alto circa 35 m. Nelle intenzioni dell'amministrazione doveva essere il simbolo di rilancio della città, all'epoca di una congiuntura economica poco favorevole. Fu progettato da Angiolo Badaloni ed inaugurato nel 1894.

Articolo rivisto e notevolmente ampliato rispetto a quello pubblicato su "Il Pentagono" n. 5 del maggio 2008.
L'articolo offre una panoramica sull'opera di Poccianti e si concentra poi su quella che è spesso considerata una sua opera minore: i Bagnetti della Puzzolente, a Livorno. Viene poi evidenziato, con teorie finora mai adeguatamente prese in considerazione dalla critica, il legame tra questo edificio e l'opera dell'acquedotto leopoldino.

[Russian Ambassadors in Leghorn and the Relationship between Muscovy and Tuscany in the Seventeenth Century]. In 1656 and in 1660 some ambassadors of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich of Russia arrived in Livorno. The first of these embassies, led by Ivan Ivanovich Chemodanov and the clerk Alexei Posnikov, was in fact directed in Venice but the stay of just over a month in Livorno was an important stage for the Russian ambassadors. The second mission, led by Vasily Bogdanovich Lichachaev and the clerk Ivan Fomin, was directly addressed to Tuscany although this time, the ambassadors stayed for only five days at Livorno. In both cases the presence of Russian diplomats in the city attracted much attention and left many documentary traces that are described in detail in the article. In April 1663 another Muscovite ambassador arrived in Florence: Ivan Afanas’evich Zheljabuzhskij. The three Russian embassies in Tuscany, in 1657, 1660 and 1663, laid the foundations for stable trade relations with Muscovy, which increased progressively with the gradual opening of that country to the West that characterized the last years of the reign of Alexei and those of the regency of Sophia Alexeevna. Villani highlights the importance of Dutch and English mediation in the development of Russian-Tuscan relations, and especially the role that played Charles Longland. It also shows that behind these missions stood the intention to develop commerce of some Russian goods in which the Italian markets were particularly interested in, including leather, salmon and caviar. The consolidation and development of trade between Muscovy and the Mediterranean area during the 1660s and 1670s was also thanks to the brokerage of Francesco Guasconi (a Florentine living in Muscovy), after Zheljabuzhskij’s 1663 mission time there were not direct diplomatic exchanges for a long and Tuscany was not even officially visited by Russian diplomats who travelled through Italy in those years. The resumption of direct talks with Muscovy occurred in the early 1680s due to the morbid “scientific” and “ethnographic” curiosities of the Grand Duke Cosimo III, that in any case were, not directed to Muscovy itself but to the lands which bordered with China. In the summer of 1682 the Grand Duke asked to Francesco Gasconi to buy a Circassian slave for him in Muscovy. The Grand Duke liked to surround himself with young people of different nationalities to give an exotic touch to his court. These slaves were then forced to convert to Catholicism and as soon as they become adults, they were manumitted with a good pension. Apparently the Grand Duke had to wait a long time for the arrival of his young Circassian, and, before the promised gift a Russian ambassador arrived in Tuscany in February 1688. This diplomatic mission was not addressed only to the Grand Duke and was not to deal directly with specific Russian interests in Tuscany. On May 6, 1686, in Moscow, the “eternal” Peace between Russia and Poland had been signed, putting to an end decades of war between the two countries. It was a huge success of Moscow’s foreign policy and therefore, at the beginning of 1687, Sofia Alexeevna sent a series of diplomatic embassies to all European countries to officially give this news and to prompt the construction of a league against the Turkish. The ambassador for Tuscany was Vasily Timofeevich Postnikov. This was the first diplomatic mission in Tuscany after almost a quarter of a century. The survey of the Tuscan-Russian relations since the middle of the 1600s highlights the role of the British as intermediaries between the Muscovites and Italians. And why in the course of the seventeenth century, Livorno – now the main English port for the Levant trade – also became the Italian port for Russian goods.

Il tema analizzato riguarda il trattamento della corrispondenza epistolare nella Toscana interessata direttamente o indirettamente da gravi episodi sanitari di natura epidemica. Il saggio esamina un particolare e relativamente breve momento storico, il periodo napoleonico, in cui le vicende sanitarie hanno anche toccato da vicino la terra di Toscana con la terribile epidemia di febbre gialla di Livorno del 1804-1805. Si parla degli sforzi per contenere e prevenire il contagio che all'epoca si riteneva potesse essere veicolato anche dalle corrispondenze cartacee e da queste trasmesso agli uomini. Il transito di persone, animali, merci e lettere venne regolamentato su tutte le frontiere toscane, sia quelle di mare che quelle di terra, e coinvolse anche le strutture sanitarie degli stati confinanti. I lazzaretti furono le strutture preposte all'attività di controllo ed eliminazione dei rischi di contagio. A Livorno ne erano in funzione tre, efficienti e collaudati da molti anni di attività; ma anche altri ne vennero creati per le necessità contingenti.
Si parla prevalentemente di Toscana tirrenica e insulare. Si analizzano le metodiche di disinfezione delle lettere che si scopre essere caratteristiche a Livorno a seconda della provenienza, mentre invece all'isola d'Elba vengono applicati sistemi più tradizionali. A Piombino si progetta una piccola ma raffinata e funzionale "casa sanitaria" all'interno della quale vi doveva essere anche il luogo per "affumare le lettere". Le barche corriere in servizio tra Bastia e Portoferraio spesso vengono poste in quarantena, al contrario di quelle tra Piombino e Portoferraio.

This work is about the disinfection treatment of the correspondence in the Tuscany interested directly or indirectly by serious events of epidemic nature. In particular it shall examine one relatively short historical period - the Napoleonic Age - during which sanitary incidents touched closely the Tuscany lands with the terrible epidemic yellow fever of Leghorn in 1804-1805.
Then it talks about the efforts of containing and preventing the infection which, by that period, was thought to be carried also by paper correspondence to humans. The passage through every Tuscany frontiers, both sea and land ones, of people, animals, goods and letters was regulated and the rules concerned the medical facilities of the neighboring countries too. The quarantine hospital were the structures designed to the activity of control and elimination of the risks of contagion. In Leghorn three were in operation, efficient and had been testing for many years of activity; but also others were created from there for the contingent necessities.
It primarily speaks of Tyrrhenian and insular Tuscany; it comes to be analyzed the method of disinfection of the letters, which is found to be characteristic at Leghorn according to the origin, while in the island of Elba more traditional systems were applied. A small but refined and functional "sanitary house" is planned at Piombino, inside which it might be the place where "affumare" the letters too. The mail boats in service between Bastia and Portoferraio were often set in quarantine, unlike those between Piombino and Portoferraio.

"[A Mediterranean Window on Europe: the Northerners in Early Modern Leghorn]. Livorno in the early modern period for commercial and economic reasons was the site of rich British and Dutch mercantile communities and was also one of the few Italian cities where, in the seventeenth century, Italians and Nordics came into direct contact. In the essay Villani examines how the “Nordics” lived in Livorno, going beyond mere mercantile relations and investigating, from the social and cultural point of view, what difficulties they experienced in that context, being communities so culturally and religiously distant from Italy. He also discusses how these foreigners were perceived by the Italians. If St. Petersburg was rightly called “the window through which Russia looks on Europe” (Francesco Algarotti), one can say that Leghorn in the seventeenth century was to some extent the Italian window on Northern Europe. Relying on his earlier research on the religious history of the mercantile communities of Livorno already published or submitted for publication, Villani attempts to capture the view that from that window that was launched on the north in the seventeenth century.
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[The Consuls of the English Nation in Leghorn between 1665 and 1673: Joseph Kent, Thomas Clutterbuck and Ephraim Skinner]. Examining in detail the years 1665 to 1673 the article allows Villani to reconstruct the history of British consular presence in Livorno from the end of the 1500s. The author shows how the first two consuls – Raymond Dawkins and Thomas Hunt – were elected by Trinity House, a corporation of sea pilots, while only in 1621 the new consul, Richard Allen was elected by the Levant Company with the consent of the sovereign, James I. He has succeeded the Catholic Morgan Read, who had exercised the office from 1634 until his death in Livorno on May 29, 1665. After Read’s death Britain chose the enigmatic figure of Joseph Kent, which may have been the pseudonym of the Baronet John Abdy who adopted the name in order to mask his activities as a royalist spy during the Interregnum. Joseph Kent died in Rome on May 22, 1670 and was succeeded by Thomas Clutterbuck in 1669 and later Ephraim Skinner in 1671. These three consuls are interesting figures and their embassies were during a time when the litigious merchant community in Livorno experienced a marked increase in economic importance. The article also briefly outlines the work of other British consuls in the seventeenth century. The history of British consuls in the 1600s, along with their successors through to the eve of World War II, clearly shows Livorno’s important role in the political and diplomatic relations between Tuscany and England. In a important posthumous article on the English in Genoa between 1600s and 1700s published in Quaderni Storici Edoardo Grendi emphasized the importance consuls and envoys have for a nation “devoted to commerce.” He demonstrated how these “leading figures” not so much expressed relationships to the “community or national group of local settlement, but rather evolutions and dynamics of power associated with inter-state relations.” This essay is a detailed verification of this line of research.

Thanks to the special privileges granted by Ferdinand I Medici at the end of the XVI century, the Jewish community of Livorno enjoyed civil and religious freedom to an extent that was unknown in Florence, where Jews, enclosed in a ghetto, had also to face the challenges set up by the opening of a House of the catechumens (1636), intended to obtain their conversion to Catholicism. In Livorno, instead, economical considerations made such an institution inappropriate: during almost the entire XVIII century Grand-ducal authorities opposed the attempts made by the local Brotherhood of the Purification to open one in the town. Yet a local scholar's recent discovery of two registers belonging to a Livorno's House of Catechumens along with letters sent to the sister institution in Florence clearly indicates that a House of Catechumens was actually open in Livorno in the 1790s, thus prompting further researches.

[Notes on Francesco Terriesi (1635-1715). Merchant, diplomatic and civil servant of the Medici between London and Leghorn]. The article reconstructs for the first time the biography of Francesco Terriesi, whose diplomatic newsletters from London were often used as a source for reconstructing the history of the Catholic restoration of James II and the Glorious Revolution. Presumably Francesco Terriesi moved to London around the spring of 1668, most likely to promote a project of the Grand Duke of Tuscany to set up in the English capital a Florentine silk trading house. Between 1670 and 1679 Terriesi was frequently employed to carry out sensitive tasks for the Medici court, obviating the inability always shown by the official Tuscan diplomatic representative Giovanni Salvetti Antelminelli to meet demands that went beyond the handling of ordinary administration. Terriesi was asked to perform tasks that could be defined in modern terms, with an anachronism, those of a cultural attaché. It was chiefly through him that famous intellectuals such as Henry Neville, the mathematician Samuel Morland and the diplomat and historian William Temple maintained close ties with the Grand Ducal court of Florence. Terriesi was frequently commissioned by the Grand Duke to buy English books, and he himself pointed out in Florence the most interesting things published in England. It was through him that Neville’s English translation of Machiavelli and several books of John Milton arrived in Italy along with controversial religious works in English, dictionaries, and antiquarian works, among others. He was regularly commissioned by the Grand Duke to purchase medals, paintings, and maintain contact with artists such as Samuel Cooper and Richard Gibson. Demonstrating the trust he was vested with it was through him that presents and gifts were delivered to court figures. Since 1670 Terriesi was also tasked with providing Florence with regular information on “public affairs” to enrich the insipid weekly newsletters sent by the official resident Giovanni Salvetti Antelminelli. After being away from England for over a year in October 1678 Terriesi was formally accredited in London as an agent eventually taking over Salvetti Antelminelli’s diplomatic functions. From 23 February 1680 he also replaced him the informer to the State Secretariat of Florence. On the well established model for the Tuscan diplomats in England, he started sending a weekly newsletter, written impersonally and unsigned always accompanied by a short cover letter addressed directly to the First Secretary of State, Francesco Panciatichi, usually consisting of a few lines of concise service communications. After the Glorious Revolution, Tuscany decided to proceed with only an informal recognition of the new regime. It was clearly a compromise and Terriesi’s situation became very precarious. He asked permission to return to Italy and sent his last dispatch from London on 13 March 1691. Significantly, in February 1695, less than four years after his return to Tuscany, Terriesi was appointed Customs Supervisor (provveditore della dogana) of Livorno. In his new function Terriesi was able to capitalize on the knowledge gained over many years in London; it was not coincidental that someone with twenty years of experience in England was chosen for this position The port of Livorno was the central node for the English trade in the Levant with a thriving and vibrant British community that dated to the end of the 1500s. A superintendent of customs who could interact without intermediaries with the merchants of the British Factory of Livorno and the captains of the British ships calling at the port was clearly a plus. In accordance with his testament Francesco Terriesi was buried in the church of San Ferdinando at Livorno. The church was built to house the barefooted Trinitarian Fathers della Crocetta, a religious order dedicated to the redemption of Christian captives of the Turks, active in Livorno in the second half of 1600s. The article, which also describes Terriesi’s relationship with Gregorio Leti, highlights how to interpret the cultural, political and economic relations between England and Italy in the seventeenth century. In this context it is essential to investigate the role of such mediating figures as Terriesi who shows how in Baroque Italy, in the mercantile milieu, there functioned intellectuals attentive to European cultural and political novelties, often overlooked by the professional “intellectuals.”

In this essay Matteo Giunti and Stefano Villani, argue that the cemetery provides a window unto the complex and conflictual interactions between the British and the Italian political and religious  authorities, as well as religious pluralism and tolerance, in early modern Livorno and Tuscany. They demonstrate, using unpublished documents from  the National Archives of London and the State Archives of Livorno and Florence, that the Old English Cemetery of Livorno is the oldest of its kind in Italy, and perhaps the oldest of all extant British cemeteries in the Mediterranean.  At the end of January 1644 Daniel Oxenbridge, a wealthy English merchant who fell ill  in Livorno, bequeathed 150 pounds “towards the buying of a burying place for the English nation in Liverne”. The authors discuss the problems that the British Factory had to face with the Italian religious authorities to protect the graves. It was only in 1746, thanks to a generous bequest from the merchant Robert Bateman, that this was possible. They also detail the way the property surrounding the cemetery changed hands and became a sort of “British” neighborhood, later reduced to just the cemetery, a “bit of England on foreign soil”. The cemetery, which suffered major bomb damage during World War II, still exists in via Verdi, Livorno.

Storia urbanistica e architettonica del territorio di Fiorentina, a Livorno, con particolare riferimento alla chiesa di San Matteo (XVIII secolo), l'ortatorio di S. Antonino, la Barriera Fiorentina (Carlo Reishammer, Alessandro Manetti), i vari cimiteri della zona (cattolico armeno, ebraico, protestante olandese-alemanno, greco-ortodosso) e l'evoluzione del trasporto pubblico (linee tramviarie, filoviarie e ferroviarie, con riferimento alla Livorno-Tirrenia-Pisa e al deposito ferroviario di via Provinciale Pisana).

[Some Notes on the Fencing of the Non-catholic Cemeteries in Leghorn]. Livorno in the early modern period hosted a unique and extraordinary complex of languages, religions and customs. Parrallel to the living city, where Italians, Jews, Dutch, British, Armenians, Greeks and Turks, communicated, traded and quarreled with one other, there existed segregated cities of the dead. In the general history of the “nations” of Livorno that of non-Catholic cemeteries is a very important chapter in which much remains to be investigated. In this essay, Stefano Villani reconstructs the controversy that followed the request to fence off the land where English Protestants were buried since the end of the sixteenth century. The Inquisition decidedly opposed this concession seeking to emphasize, symbolically, the unworthiness of those who died outside the Catholic Church while simultaneously fearing that a physical screen mighted be used to hide Protestant ceremonies. Consequently, it was only in 1706 that the cemetery could be enclosed by a little wall and iron fencing. The opposition on the part of the Catholic Church to any concession seems to have been driven by the fear that similar privileges could ingenerate a kind of plebeian Latitudinarianism. This was spurred by the fear that concessions might popularize the notion that it was socially acceptable to be Christian without belonging to the Catholic Church, and that Catholic rites were not fundamental to salvation rather than the hypothetical conversion of Livornese to Protestantism. This was a scandal that the Catholic Church sought to avoid. For the English, demands of religious freedom had an eminently symbolic meaning related closely to their identity and dignity: it was perceived as humiliating for English merchants, some very rich, to bury their relatives in an open field where dogs could roam as they pleased, and to have to send their children to be baptized in a Catholic church. Thus the requests for a minister and a fenced cemetery seem to have been motivated more by social prestige than by religious questions. The Dutch, English and Jewish burial places were outside the city walls and although they were unfenced it was not coincidental that they contained sumptuous funeral monuments, sometimes of marble and artistically sculptured.

La prima parte dell'articolo offre una panoramica sulla comunità armena di Livorno attraverso le sue architetture più significative. Si ripercorrono poi le principali vicende che portarono alla costruzione della chiesa armena di San Gregorio.

Amelia Evans è nata a Filadelfi a nel 1744, ai tempi in cui la Pennsylvania era
ancora una colonia britannica. Suo padre, Lewis Evans, il primo geografo dei futuri
Stati Uniti d’America, collabora alle ricerche scientifi che di Benjamin Franklin.
Amelia è la fi glioccia dei Franklin e la morte precoce dei suoi genitori cementerà
ulteriormente questa relazione. Le lettere che Amelia scambierà con Franklin fi no
alla morte di quest’ultimo nel 1790 sono una primaria fonte di informazioni su di
lei. Già da giovane Amelia inizia a viaggiare: a 18 anni lascia defi nitivamente Filadelfi
a e va a studiare in Inghilterra. A 22 anni la troviamo a Tunisi, come governante
delle fi glie del console britannico Traill. È qui che sposa un capitano della marina
mercantile irlandese, David Barry, che poi accompagnerà nelle sue peregrinazioni
fi no a Smirne. Saranno le diffi coltà economiche di David Barry che condurranno
la coppia a Livorno nel 1778. Dimoreranno a Pisa dove David morirà poco dopo,
lasciando una vedova e tanti bambini ancora piccoli. Amelia è minuta ma energica,
è colta, appassionata di storia antica. Ama scrivere. Sarà il sostegno della comunità
mercantile internazionale di Livorno che renderà la giovane donna una scrittrice. Il
suo primo romanzo, una sorta di cronaca dal gusto orientale con numerose reminescenze
smirniote, è pubblicato anonimamente a Londra nel 1790. Dopo due secoli
di oblio, le ricerche hanno permesso di rendere giustizia all’autore. La lista dei sottoscrittori
al romanzo, che comporta un centinaio di residenti livornesi, è una istantanea
dell’attività mercantile e delle relazioni sociali e familiari alla fi ne del XVIII
secolo. In seguito Amelia lascerà Livorno alla volta dell’Inghilterra dove morirà in
tarda età nel 1835, mentre una delle sue fi glie si stabilirà nella nostra città divenendo
la signora Schintz. Questo percorso di donna permette di farsi un’idea del clima di
effervescenza e cosmopolitismo che regnava a Livorno ai tempi del Porto Franco.

«Operando in pregiudizio della piazza di Livorno». The Italian States and the Imperial peace with Barbery Regencies (1748-1749): an affair of public health and private business

The Imperial peace with Barbery Regencies can be considered a turning point for Leghorn’s call and, in a wider way, for the whole system of Tyrrhenian trade. On one hand it represents an attempt of inserting Leghorn in the economical development of Habsburg’s shipping; on the other hand it is perceived by other States as a direct challenge to a balanced system. The main consequence of the peace is a “sanitary war” conducted by the other Italian States against Tuscany. The aims of this contribution are two: firstly, the author wants to underline the importance of sanitary institutions in the building of an economical space; secondly he desires to delineate the evolution of the port of Leghorn in the crucial moment of the dynastical passage from Medici to Lorena.

Il documento analizza lo sviluppo di Livorno dal XVII secolo, quando vi si stabilirono i frati domenicani. Nel 1695, viene data loro una porzione di terreno all’interno di un’area in espansione: la “Nuova Venezia”. Dopo la soppressione del convento, il complesso viene adibito all’amministrazione ecclesiastica. Durante la dominazione francese, l’edificio viene trasformato in prigione. Un recente restauro dell’ex convento domenicano ad uso dell’Archivio di Stato ha offerto l’opportunità per conoscere la sua complessa storia religiosa e architettonica.
The paper analyses Livorno’s development since the 17th century when the Dominican Friars settled there. In 1695, they were given land in an expanding area: “New Venice”. After the suppression of the convent, the complex was used for ecclesiastical administration. During the French domination, the building was turned into a prison. A recent restoration of the former Dominican convent for use by the State Archives offered a complex opportunity to learn about its religious history.

The free port has played a primary role in the Modern Age Mediterranean economic policy. In order to give a boost to the local economy, favourable regulations to the arrival and rapid integration of foreigners within the pre-existing socioeconomic environment were established. In the Mediterranean ports – namely Genoa, Leghorn, Marseille, Trieste and Fiume, Messina, Nice, etc. – a great number of ship owners, vendors, simple traders or salesmen, together with their relatives, house helpers and employees used therefore to arrive. They moved there whilst maintaining tight relations with their motherlands. The local élites, scared of losing their power, opposed these ventures. It is possible to pinpoint and single out a few common elements in the regulation of these ports, which appealed to the contemporaries, and thanks to which social, cultural, linguistic and political barriers were being shattered. What stands out from this analysis is an image of a dynamic and open-minded Mediterranean and Europe.

Enrico Rodolfo Schintz (Livorno 1803-Firenze 1856) rappresenta un caso paradigmatico della società internazionale della Livorno al tempo del Porto Franco. Primogenito di una coppia elvetico-inglese, che in casa parlava italiano, al momento della sua nascita il padre Giovanni Rodolfo Schintz, di antica e aristocratica famiglia zurighese, era già socio del ricco
negoziante inglese James Partridge di Livorno, mentre la madre, Anna Africana Barry (1778-1820), che era una giovane inglese nata a Tunisi e residente in città fin dall’infanzia, rimasta orfana di padre a tre anni, era dama di compagnia della signora Partridge. Il nonno, David Barry Esq., un capitano della marina di antica stirpe irlandese che era da generazioni nel commercio del vino, è sepolto nel Cimitero Inglese di via Verdi. La nonna Amelia Evans di Philadelphia, che passò gli ultimi anni della sua vita vicino a Southampton in Inghilterra, scriveva romanzi anonimi ed è già stata oggetto di un articolo pubblicato su questa rivista.

Il tema analizzato riguarda il trattamento della corrispondenza epistolare nella Toscana interessata direttamente o indirettamente da gravi episodi sanitari di natura epidemica. Il saggio esamina un particolare e relativamente breve momento storico, il periodo napoleonico, in cui le vicende sanitarie hanno anche toccato da vicino la terra di Toscana con la terribile epidemia di febbre gialla di Livorno del 1804-1805. Si parla degli sforzi per contenere e prevenire il contagio che all'epoca si riteneva potesse essere veicolato anche dalle corrispondenze cartacee e da queste trasmesso agli uomini. Il transito di persone, animali, merci e lettere venne regolamentato su tutte le frontiere toscane, sia quelle di mare che quelle di terra, e coinvolse anche le strutture sanitarie degli stati confinanti. I lazzaretti furono le strutture preposte all'attività di controllo ed eliminazione dei rischi di contagio. A Livorno ne erano in funzione tre, efficienti e collaudati da molti anni di attività; ma anche altri ne vennero creati per le necessità contingenti.
Si parla prevalentemente di Toscana tirrenica e insulare. Si analizzano le metodiche di disinfezione delle lettere che si scopre essere caratteristiche a Livorno a seconda della provenienza, mentre invece all'isola d'Elba vengono applicati sistemi più tradizionali. A Piombino si progetta una piccola ma raffinata e funzionale "casa sanitaria" all'interno della quale vi doveva essere anche il luogo per "affumare le lettere". Le barche corriere in servizio tra Bastia e Portoferraio spesso vengono poste in quarantena, al contrario di quelle tra Piombino e Portoferraio.

La ricerca, in due parti, tratteggia la storia dell'area di Porta a Pisa ed in particolare le vicende che hanno portato alla sua distruzione e alla realizzazione di Palazzo Sforzi, nella prima metà del XIX secolo.
Il palazzo, legato a Giuseppe Mazzini e ad alcune importanti famiglie come i Rosselli e i De Ghantuz Cubbe, dominava il fronte ovest della piazza dei Granduchi (piazza della Repubblica, detta Voltone) e fu sede dell'ufficio postale. E' andato distrutto durante la seconda guerra mondiale.

"French-Italian painter and engraver Alfredo Müller was born in Livorno in 1869 and died in Paris in 1939. No critical study has ever been made of his work which has therefore remained the domain of a few intimate admirers, despite the important exhibition that was held in Livorno in the spring of 2011 at the Granai di Villa Mimbelli. 
If Livorno had not been the Livorno of Nations, Alfredo Müller would never have existed: he would simply never have been born. He is one of those “eternal Livornese” preceded by generations of ancestors who came from distant and diverse places, whose paths would never have crossed if the port of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany had not reunited them here. It was this “Livorno delle Nazioni” that brought him to the city, a ‘borderless European’ long before the concept existed, but “condemned” to suffer nationalist prejudices wherever he lived. He was the son of an international Swiss trader, grandson of an Anglo-Swiss doctor, Charles Schintz, president of the Dutch-German Protestant Congregation, great-grandson of Agostino Kotzian – one of the key figures in the history of the Leopoldian railway line, the first in Tuscany -, cousin of scholar Enrico Mayer and humanist Giampietro Vieusseux, and descendant of a captain of the Irish marines, now buried in Livorno’s Old English Cemetery, who married Benjamin Franklin’s goddaughter whom he had met in Tunis.
It was undoubtedly Müller’s friendship with Puccini and his now forgotten influence that united young avant-garde painters of the Club La Bohème at Torre del Lago, where the Müller family spent the summer in the villa that belonged to his great uncle Kotzian (now the Villa Orlando). Alfredo Muller is certainly a romantic hero with a tragic destiny. As a wealthy young man, he saw his fortunes ruined by the collapse of the Bank of Livorno in 1890; his painting, discredited by the master of the Macchiaioli school Giovanni Fattori, was held responsible – with his French background – for influencing young artists of his generation, derogatorily called “Müllerini” by Fattori himself; in 1895 he emigrated without a penny to France, and in 1914 was forced to stay in Florence because of the war.
Should we perhaps make do with the fact that the presence of this artist in the history of art is like that of a comet passing over Livorno and Tuscany, leaving in its trail no more than a fine golden dust? What if, instead, we tried to find out more about his work? But how can we do that without seeing it? How can we understand Müller’s painting if we cannot get a close look at his astonishing brush strokes? In 1922, during a solo exhibition in Milan, the artist expressed his wish that, «the public and critics will analyse without prejudice my instinct, which is my art».
Well, so be it! Francesco Andreotti, Azzurra Conti, Livia Giunti and Hélène Koehl took the artist by his word and rose to the challenge, organising a temporary exhibition of around twenty of his works at the Galleria Studio d’Arte dell’Ottocento in Livorno, thereby inviting the observer to set out on a journey into the heart of Müller’s painting.
The eye of the camera follows the artist’s work, stroke by stroke, capturing an original sequence of colours and forms that lead one to another on various supports. It tries to identify with the gaze of someone intent on exploring the canvas. Gradually, along the way, the magic erupts and the artist – considered much too highbrow by his contemporaries because of a painting technique that echoes both Claude Monet, whom he discovered in Paris in 1890, and Paul Cézanne with whom he painted (never forgetting the lessons of his first teacher, Florentine portrait artist Michele Gordigiani) – comes back to being simply Müller, a captivating figure who makes melancholy, light-filled paintings. There are his etchings, too, recalling the decade he spent in Paris. The journey is accompanied by Ellina Akimova on piano, the voice of Matteo Giunti as Müller, the words of Verlaine and Dante recited by Livia Giunti and Francesco Andreotti, and, lastly, the magnificent voice of soprano Andreea Soare singing Rossini’s Giusto Ciel, an aria capable, more than any discourse, of rendering the atmosphere of Müller’s Arlecchinate, tragic scenes with a lightness of spirit."

La Fortezza Vecchia è l'unico complesso architettonico di Livorno in cui è possibile ripercorrere l'intera vicenda storica della città. L'articolo, in due parte, riassume gli episodi più rilevanti che hanno portato alla costruzione della complessa macchina bellica del Sangallo e le successive trasformazioni, fino ai giorni nostri.

The documents  of the Roman Inquisition evidence the semantic embarrassment of the Inquisitors to define the members of the Church of England. Very rarely it is used for them the expression “of the Anglican sect of Protestants”. More often the British are defined as Calvinists or as Lutherans, more rarely as "Protestant heretics of England" , or as of the "mixed religion, part of Luther and part of Calvin." The schemes crystallized in the Inquisitorial manuals present a conceptual framework that obviously did not work well for Protestants who were neither Lutherans nor Calvinists. The mechanical application  of these uncertain definitions demonstrates not only the lack of a more sophisticated interpretative paradigm but also  the bureaucratic  nature of many of the inquisitorial proceedings.

A theologian and orientalist, Johann Michael Vansleb (also known as Wansleben) had been sent on a cultural and political mission to Ethiopia by the German protestant Duke Ernest I of Saxe-Gotha in July 1663. Travelling via Italy he arrived in Alexandria in January 1664. After one year spent in Egypt, at the beginning of 1665, Vansleb moved to Leghorn where stayed until March of that year. There he was involved in the preparation of an annotated manuscript summary in English of James Harrington’s major works. He then moved to Rome where converted to Catholicism and afterwards spent some time in Tuscany. In Florence he mixed with the members of the Academy of Cimento and made the acquaintance of the British ambassador, John Finch (and former professor of Anatomy at the University of Pisa), whom he subsequently met at Smyrna. In Rome he had finished the first draft (in German) of a relation of his stay in Egypt that was translated into Italian by an Italian priest and then, after having been revised by Francesco Marucelli, was published in that language in Paris in 1671 as Relazione dello stato presente dell’Egitto with a dedication to the Grand Duke of Tuscany Cosmo de’ Medici. A first draft of this Italian version is now at the British Library (Add MS 8780, fol. 1v) and very significantly in the manuscript dedication of this copy Vansleb praised the English merchant Charles Longland. This reference was later dropped from the printed version. Charles Longland (1603-1688) was an affluent merchant of the British Factory of Leghorn and during the 1650s was the English agent for the Commonwealth and the Protectorate. An informer of John Thurloe, Longland after the Restoration remained in Leghorn and showed his nonconformist sympathies. We know from Longland’s letter that he was a Republican and it is possible to hypothesize that his participation in the preparation of the above-mentioned summary of Harrington’s writings. Villani, relying on his previous researches on Longland, reconstructs here his possible involvement in this republican network.

[Protestants in Livorno in the Early Modern Period]. Basing largely on his own earlier research, Villani argues that the Roman Catholic religious authorities in Livorno sought to prevent the rise of a rustic Latitudinarianism. After reconstructing the conflicts between Protestant resident foreigners in Livorno in the early modern period, the text goes on to explore the denial of any form of public Protestant worship, including denying them permission to fence their cemeteries. In the 1500s, the Friulan miller Domenico Scandella, also known as Menocchio, became aware of beliefs and customs different from his own after reading Sir John Mandeville’s fantastic descriptions of distant lands and began to question the foundations of his own beliefs and customs. The discovery that there were “many different kinds of nations, some believe in one way, some in another” gave to Menocchio what Carlo Ginzburg has efficaciously defined as “a relativistic shock,” almost identical to that that which Montaigne suffered reading reports on the natives of the New World. The Inquisitors of Pisa feared that somebody in Leghorn, seeing so many different religions and manifestations of faiths, could suffer a similar relativistic shock. Essentially, they feared that the conviction that ideas and ways of life that diverged from the traditional and those sanctioned by the authorities could be equally valid could spontaneously emerge. Even more dangerous was the possibility that a conviction could spread that liturgical practices and ecclesiastical organization were of secondary importance.

This paper is the first attempt to outline a biographical portrait of Rabbi Samuele Colombo (1868-1923), Chief Rabbi of the community of Livorno from 1900, stressing the links with his teacher, Rabbi Elijah Benamozegh (1822-1900), the last great Kabbalist in Italy.

Crimes, Violence and Corruption in the Bagno of Livorno: 17th Century Trials against "Turkish" Slaves

The myth of a «tolerant» and cosmopolitan Livorno has often obscured the reality of a city that during the 17th century housed a huge prison (the Bagno), built to better monitor the galley slaves and the convicts to forced labor. They were the protagonists of a complex criminal life: they stole, rebelled against their keepers and killed each other, whilst city officials argued over who had the authority to judge crimes committed by convicts. Their survival depended also on their ability to adapt to the mechanisms of oppression and corruption typical of a prison society, as it is shown by a mid-century inquiry against the captain of the Bagno, accused of extorting money from the inmates in exchange for better treatment. Through the examination of some criminal trials recorded in the Medici archives, this paper tries to bring to light the less known aspects of the life of Livorno’s Muslim slaves, such as the possibility, granted to them, to act in court by taking an oath «in the Turkish way». Although in a context often violent and irregular, they participated in the creation of a society characterized by the interaction between people of different languages and religions.


Nella rappresentazione della società livornese di età moderna ci si è spesso serviti del mito di una città tollerante e cosmopolita, dove le relazioni tra individui di religione e cultura diversa sarebbero sempre state all’insegna del rispetto e della collaborazione, soprattutto per ragioni di carattere commerciale. Così facendo si rischia tuttavia di dimenticare che, a fianco della sua natura di porto mercantile, Livorno era anche la sede di una enorme prigione di schiavi. La vita all’interno del Bagno era dominata da logiche di violenza e corruzione che oltrepassavano sì le barriere culturali ed etniche tra schiavi musulmani, forzati cristiani e ministri granducali, ma in modi piuttosto diversi da quelli della città. Sulla base di documentazione archivistica inedita si cercherà di portare nuova luce su questo aspetto poco conosciuto della storia livornese.

Nella Livorno del 1810 Aron Fernando, intellettuale ebreo cinquantenne di inossidabile fede in Napoleone e nel progresso della ragione, tenta di pubblicare un progetto di radicale riforma dell’ebraismo, invocando la riduzione a soli sessanta precetti e proponendo un sistema pedagogico: di fatto un primo contributo del tutto italiano, visionario e inane, al dibattito ottocentesco sulla Riforma ebraica. La pubblicazione viene proscritta, ma non è perduta; sulla base di copie superstiti del primo tomo e del manoscritto del preventivato secondo, consegnato al censore francese, ho curato una riedizione elettronica integrale dell’opera, che qui presento.

Blake, Hugo 2015 Preface. In Gran Bretagna e Italia tra Mediterraneo e Atlantico: Livorno – ‘un porto inglese’; Italy and Britain between Mediteranean and Atlantic Worlds: Leghorn – 'an English port' (ed. Hugo Blake), Archeologia Postmedievale 19, pp. 11–16.

[The Religious History of the English Community of Leghorn (17th-18th Centuries)]. The community of British merchants in Livorno, originating in the late sixteenth century, was from the middle of the seventeenth century undoubtedly the most important English community present in Italy, both in terms of numerical consistency and economic and political vitality. There are numerous studies on trade in the Mediterranean that highlight the role of Livorno from an economic point of view as the English port to the Levant and on the importance of the Livornese British Factory. But the history of the English community of Livorno in the seventeenth and eighteenth century is also the story of the conflicts that its members had with the political and religious Tuscan authorities to assert their right to openly practice their religious beliefs. This struggle to gain wider religious freedom included the British Protestants on one hand and the central and local Grand Ducal authorities, the Tuscan religious authorities and the Inquisition on the other. A plurality of subjects, often with divergent interests, that in the course of the seventeenth century confronted each other on two main issues: the opportunity for the community to have a Protestant minister and the possibility to have a cemetery to bury the British merchants who died in Livorno. The English community gained its own chaplain only in 1707 and was able to fence off the field that had long been used by the British to bury their dead only in the mid-1700s. The study of these events and the role played by some English merchants highlights the interplay between religion and politics that characterized the relationships between the British authorities of Livorno and the Medici of Florence.

Il volume è uno studio approfondito della vita e dell’opera di Joseph Penso de Vega, esponente del «barocco sefardita». Nel testo, la sua figura viene studiata in una prospettiva interdisciplinare, alla luce dei contatti che ebbe con la comunità ebraica di Amsterdam e di Livorno, con ambienti sia cristiani che laici e con le più influenti tendenze letterarie dell’epoca. In tal modo si offre un quadro dell’autore più completo, che non si sofferma unicamente sulla sua produzione letteraria, ma sugli aspetti religiosi, di storia delle idee e di multiculturalità presenti nella sua opera.

Protestantism, Catholicism, and Religion in The Gadfly

The Gadfly is a novel by Irish writer Ethel Voynich, published in 1897.
The first part of The Gadfly is set between Pisa and Leghom. Voynich describes the British community of Leghom highlighting its confessional divisions. Religious issues play a fundamental role in the construction of this novel and the vicissitudes of Arthur Burton can be read as a metaphorical representation of the story of Jesus Christ. The interplay between historical reality and literary imagination in Voynich's novel allows us to reflect on the religious dimension of this text.

Descending from his peculiar status of priest/sculptor, Giovanni Antonio Cybei (1706-1784) developed a special relation with the Trinitarian Order.
In his hometown (Carrara) he implemented the so-called Altare del Riscatto in the cathedral, and in the Trinitarian church in Leghorn (San Ferdinando Re) the founders chapel.