Grand Tour

Visitors held highly contradictory views of the character of the Florentines. They were considered courteous and honest, but their frugality, while praised for allowing them to make the most of their money, was often criticized as well. Baron de Montesquieu (1728), who described the nobility of Florence as “affable” and the Florentine race as “handsome,” declared that people lived in Florence with great economy: “the men go on foot. In the evening, they light their way with a small lantern. The women go around in large carriages. In the houses, when they are not playing cards, illumination is provided by a lamp; when not many people are there, by a candle [...]”. This was not intended as a criticism, as can be deduced from his subsequent tirade against the wastage of wood in countries on the other side of the Alps and his reflections on the value of a spartan upbringing (like the one received by Tuscan children, inured to homes that were not well heated). However, Montesquieu warns against taking this to an excess, as the effects of an exaggerated sense of thrift prevented one from enjoying life.

De Brosses (1740), on the other hand, was struck by the luxury that the Florentines flaunted in their carriages, furniture, liveries and dress. At the soirées in which the author took part every evening, there were “around three hundred ladies covered with diamonds and five hundred men dressed in attire that the duke of Richelieu would be embarrassed to wear”. And yet he suspected that it was more a question of ostentation than custom: “on the other hand I have been told that those sumptuous clothes only appeared on grand occasions and lasted a lifetime; those luxuries, those balls, those numerous and extraordinary gatherings, those soirées with so many lights, were held on the occasion of two high-ranking marriages that had brought the whole city together...”.

Another constant of the Florentine character was formality, and this too could sometimes make outsiders feel uncomfortable.

Misson (1688) was one of the first to mention it, lamenting the fact that, however beautiful and well situated Florence might be, a stay in the city was a gloomy experience for those who were accustomed to enjoying the pleasures of society. He declared that anyone who spent a few years there could not help but express his displeasure at the stiff manners and everlasting ceremonies of the Florentines, as well as at the invisibility of women. Celebrated in this connection, however negative, is the merciless view of the city’s women expressed by de Sade, who described them as “tall, impertinent, dirty, untidy and greedy [...] demanding and pretentious.” He also deplored the mania for playing the gallant, which left little room for a stranger to win a lady’s favors (1776).

Another frequently mentioned element of the Florentine character was pride. Smollett (1765), who claimed to have met a large number of wealthy and fashionable people in the city, considered the population excessively reserved and haughty: “they affect a gaiety in their dress, equipage, and conversation; but stand very much on their punctilio with strangers; and will not, without great reluctance, admit into their assemblies any lady of another country, whose noblesse is not ascertained by a title”. Smollett was also scandalized by the fact that, with all their pride, the Florentines did not disdain to “enter into partnership with shop-keepers, and even to sell wine by retail”. This was even true of the grand duke, according to Evelyn (1644), who described him at his residence of Palazzo Pitti, ready to sell the wine he had managed to put aside, with flasks cluttering up the main entrance hall (Brilli, 1993).

On the other hand recognition of the liveliness of Florentine intelligence and wit, and of the city’s cultural life, was unanimous. De Brosses, who did not find Florence, “all things considered,” as congenial “as the other cities,” nevertheless declared that it was inhabited by “a greater number [...] of people of intelligence and worth. No other population in Italy equals the Florentines in this, indeed it is often they who supply them to the other regions”.

Comments on the character and the social life of the other cities of Tuscany are less numerous but still present. Siena in the first place, owing to the partiality shown to the city for its pure air, musical language and friendly citizenry. Boswell (1766) held the place in very high regard, declaring it free of the affectation and formality attributed to the Florentines. Since it was not a seat of the court, the city was also unaffected by the adulation and flattery to which the Florentine nobility was prone. The Sienese were considered independent and proud. When some personage or prince arrives on a visit, said Gibbon (1764), “he is received courteously, but not too much fuss is made of him [...]”.

Lucca receives a mention too, but in a more generic and detached manner. Misson (1688), for instance, noted that the majority of gentlemen spoke French and behaved in a civil way to foreigners, and that the ladies were no more invisible than in many other places in Italy.

Special attention, tinged with hints of Romanticism, was devoted to the people of the countryside. There were many travelers who came into contact with the peasantry, and the portrait they painted of them, always idealized, combined beauty, naturalness and, often, the gracefulness of their language as well. Describing the appearance of the girls in the surroundings of Florence – slender, adorned by art and nature with flowers and necklaces, and wearing the national headgear, a small straw hat, M.me du Boccage presented a very fashionable picture of them: “in short the dress of the country lasses in our opera is a faithful image of the peasant girls in these regions”.