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The Ducci of Subbiano

Anna Tamanti’s family in the Casentino

The Ducci of Subbiano, landowners, notaries and later mayors in the Casentino above Arezzo, married into the Tamanti twice. In 1809 Anna Tamanti, Filandro’s daughter, married Guido Orazio Ducci at Montalcino, and in 1848 her nephew Filandro married Letizia Ducci at Arezzo. Anna’s marriage is the best documented of any Tamanti daughter’s, because she took her own son to court over it, and her descendants were still growing wine at Subbiano, and still naming their sons Filandro, a century later. This page is drawn from the new Ducci chapter of the Palazzo Tamanti storybook. Anna’s own life has its page among the family leaders: Anna Tamanti Ducci (1790–1860).

A Montalcino bride for the Casentino, 1809

The groom was Sig. Guido Orazio Ducci of Subbiano, aged thirty-seven, son of the late Dario and grandson of the late Captain Domenico Ducci. His mother, Alessandra Fini, was living and sent her consent to Montalcino by a power of attorney, which authorized Giacomo Tamanti to give it on her behalf. Anna was eighteen and still a minor; her father Filandro was present, and her mother, Barbara Francescoli, had died. The banns were read in Montalcino and in Subbiano, and their first son, Dario, was born at Subbiano on 17 November 1809. With this marriage a daughter of the palazzo left for a landowning house some 65 kilometers to the north-east as the crow flies.

Her marriage settlement survives in print because it later went to court. Besides a dowry and a trousseau, Filandro gave Anna a sum of separate property that her husband was to manage but account for to her, and Guido promised her a yearly allowance of pin money while paying for her clothes himself.

The Ducci brothers

Anna married into a large family that was no stranger to the courts. Guido Orazio was one of six sons of Dario Ducci and Alessandra Fini. Their mother died on 17 April 1823, leaving Guido her universal heir, charged with legacies to his brothers, and in the late 1820s he lost two lawsuits against them before the Ruota of Arezzo and the Supreme Council. Both times the judges split the costs “because of the close tie of blood”. The census of 1841 lists Guido at Subbiano as a proprietario with the enumerator’s note facoltoso, a man of means; next door lived his nephew Dario, son of Francesco, a royal notary, who had married the noblewoman Teresa Guadagni at Arezzo in 1839.

In court

Guido died at Bibbiena on 9 March 1843. As a widow Anna sued her son Dario for the interest on her separate property and for some thirty years of unpaid pin money. The Florence appeal court believed her in June 1846, refusing the “commonplace assumption” that a wife who went about well dressed must have had her allowance: her clothes, the judges said, were her husband’s separate duty. One admission in the case gives Filandro’s household an unexpected member: from 1812 to 1818 Guido had paid a small yearly sum on Anna’s behalf to an aunt of hers, a nun in the convent at Pienza, whose name is still to be found. Dario took the case to the Court of Cassation, which quashed the judgment on 27 April 1847; whether mother and son later settled is not known.

A second Ducci marriage, 1848

On 24 January 1848, at Arezzo, Filandro Tamanti of Montalcino, son of Ermenegildo and Marianna Tassinari and Anna’s nephew, married Letizia Ducci, aged twenty, daughter of Gio. Carlo Ducci and Anna Bacci. Whether Letizia’s Ducci of Arezzo were kin to Anna’s is not known. Six months later Filandro’s younger brother Giacomo married Clementina Begni at Montalcino. What became of Filandro and Letizia is not yet known.

Two notaries named Dario

A notice of 1870 declaring vacant the post of the late notary Dr. Dario Ducci has been taken as the death of Anna’s son. But the Florence notarial records list two notaries of that name: Dario son of Francesco, of Subbiano, and Dario son of Guido Orazio, Anna’s son. The registers settle the question. Anna’s son Dario, aged forty-four and never before married, married Ermenegilda Borghini at Castiglion Fiorentino on 11 August 1856, and on 15 May 1872 he recognized their son Guido, born at Arezzo in 1854, as his own. Since Anna’s Dario was alive in 1872, the notary whose post fell vacant in 1870 was very probably the other Dario.

The Ducci after Anna

Anna’s line stayed on the land at Subbiano. In November 1867 her son Dario signed a notice in the official gazette as “Dario del fu Guido Orazio Ducci di Subbiano”, still managing the family’s farms. The family’s nobility of Arezzo, granted by the grand duke in 1815, was recognized by the State in 1906, and the 1913 Libro d’Oro lists both of Anna’s grandsons named Guido: Guido son of Dario, born in 1854, and his cousin Guido son of Giuseppe, Anna’s younger son. One of the two had been mayor of Subbiano before 1904 and the other was mayor in 1907. Trade directories of 1918–1922 list among the wine producers of Subbiano both Guidos and a Filandro Ducci, born in 1857 and named after Anna’s father in Montalcino: the Tamanti memory carried into the Casentino.

Still to find

The name of Anna’s aunt, the nun at Pienza; the end of the lawsuit after 1847; the fate of Filandro Tamanti and Letizia Ducci after 1848; and which of the two Guidos was mayor in which year.

Sources

This page is drawn from the Palazzo Tamanti storybook (version 2.39, October 2026), chapter “The Ducci of Subbiano: Anna Tamanti’s family in the Casentino”, where every fact carries a full archival reference. Back to the Tamanti family history.