Vine-Training Systems in use in 14th-century Tuscany*

Siena, in the 14th-century, was a powerful and prosperous city-state ruled by a council of nine rotating citizens who met and conducted the people's business in the Council Room of the Palazzo Pubblico. This Council commissioned the Italian painter Ambrogio Lorenzetta (1290 - 1348) to paint frescoes on the three open walls of the Council Room to illustrate the benefits of good government. Lorenzetta's work is titled The Allegory of Good and Bad Goverment. The fresco on the right wall shows the benefits of good government in the town and in the countryside; and it is the detail of the latter that is of interest to us.

The relevance of the fresco, for our purposes, is its depiction of three different vine-training systems in use in the countryside. The systems illustrated in the painting are identified by Nesto and di Savino as Alberata, Alberello, and (what I refer to as) Anguillara-Pancata. The first and third are of Greek origin, and were brought to Italy by the colonizing Greeks, while the middle system is high-trained and of Etruscan origin. These systems are detailed in the chart below.

It should be noted that Alberata as indicated in the figure above is a part of an extended family with vita Maritata (married to a tree) referring to vines married to a single tree while Alberata refers to vines growing up and through trees and linked to vines on other trees. The concepts are illustrated in the figures below.

Alberata Vine-Training System
(Source: Maria Antonietta Aceto,
La rappresentazione della vite maritata: alcune
recenti identificazioni, Rivista Terra di Lavora,
Anno XI, n. 1, Aprile 2016, pp. 1- 24)

Vita Maritata Vine-Training System
(Source: Maria Antonietta Aceto, 
La rappresentazione della vite maritata: alcune
recenti identificazioni, Rivista Terra di Lavora,
Anno XI, n. 1, Aprile 2016, pp. 1- 24)

Writing two centuries after the completion of the fresco, Girolamo da Firenzuola, reiterated the use of the above training systems and introduced a new one: Pergolas or broncone. Broncone are "tall columns or poles topped with transverse pieces of wood or cane" (Nesto and di Savino).

*After Nesto and di Savino, Chianti Classico.

©Wine -- Mise en abyme