Maremma Herds
Tappa
Opera
Maremma Herds
Giovanni Fattori, 1893. Oil painting on canvas, 200 x 300 cm
This large painting takes us to the Tuscan Maremma, the countryside bordered by the sea that we see in the background, where yellow helichrysium grow on sandy dunes, together with sea lilies, bottom left, that have not yet bloomed. In the centre, sat on a huge Maremmano horse, “mounted” with the typical harnesses of for “mazzetto” taming, a “buttero” guides a large herd of white Maremmana cattle with their large horns. Another two are further back, in the middle of the herd. They are all wearing typical “buttero” attire: dark harts, velvet waistcoat and jacket, leather thigh pads; the long wooden “goad ” with a metal tip in their hands.
The butteri were horse-mounted herdsmen on the Maremma estates, and spent much of their lives with the herds: they guided them at pasture and during the transhumances, i.e. when moving them according to the season from the coast to the Casentino mountain pastures. They branded the animals one by one, using an incandescent iron. They gathered them up with the “acciaia”, the Tuscan lasso. Each buttero had his own Maremmano horse, that he took care of from when it was broken.
Much linked to traditions, customs, with anecdotes deeply rooted in the Lazio and Tuscan Maremma territory, the butteri were also the protagonists of a meeting with the New World: in 1890, the famous American cowboy Buffalo Bill, who had come to Italy for the first time with is Wild West show, challenged the butteri from the Agro Pontino area to a horse-riding agility competition. He lost. Perhaps that is why when he returned for another tour in 1906, with a show in Livorno too, he did not repeat the challenge.
The butteri worked in the Maremma area together with the cowherds and herdsmen until 1950, when the agricultural reform put a stop to latifundium estates, and consequently to large, wild ranches. Butteri have now disappeared, even from the Maremmana cow farms, replaced by machines in agricultural work, but still appreciated for their meat. However, during traditional events, the butteri continue to provided displays of how their lives were and how they worked in the saddle.
[Taken from Work path, by Sara Bruni, in the Fattori Civic Museum in Livorno: works, paths, links. Guide to the educational project by Antonella Gioli, Sillabe s.r.l. Livorno, 2016]