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The Menchini of Montalcino

The house Anna brought to the Tamanti

When Dr. Jacomo Cosimo Tamanti married Anna, daughter of the late Domenico Menchini, in 1689, he married into one of the old houses of Montalcino. The Menchini had given the town gonfalonieri and priors, rectors of the hospital, physicians and churchmen, and a century later Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo still counted them among its case migliori, its better houses. Through Anna the Tamanti in time became the Menchini’s heirs, and the palazzo kept the family’s papers. This page is drawn from the new Menchini chapter of the Palazzo Tamanti storybook, the first of its six chapters on the families connected to the Tamanti.

Several branches of the family can now be followed in the records, though not yet joined into a single pedigree. Each is set out below as the documents give it, and Anna’s own line still stops at her father, Domenico.

A theologian at the emperor’s court

The family’s most famous son left Montalcino in the sixteenth century. Pietro Menchini, theologian and teacher of letters, went from Padua to Hungary as tutor to a king’s son. According to the family’s own memoirs, as summarized by Lucia Carle, he lectured at Vienna, used his stipend to found a college for fifty pupils and masters, became abbot of a great abbey on the Turkish frontier, and died just after being named a cardinal, leaving more than ten books. The Montalcino book of families gives the Menchini arms as three gold stars on blue over three gold hills, and in the eighteenth century the chronicler Tullio Canali noted that the Tamanti, “heirs of the Menchini”, kept Pietro’s authentic writings in their house. Another Menchini lectured in medicine at the Sapienza in Rome.

Physicians, a will of 1515 and a large dowry

The earliest household on record is that of Girolamo, son of Pietro Menchini, who made his will on 16 September 1515. Around 1590 the physician Scipione, son of a Girolamo Menchini, married Lucrezia, daughter of Camillo Mancini, whose dowry of 800 scudi was one of the largest Carle found among the town’s citizen families. Another physician, Dr. Bartolomeo Menchini, married Olimpia Zucchi, and the chapel they endowed passed to Dr. Stefano Menchini. Two Menchini, Francesco and Bartolomeo, were rectors of the hospital, the office Dr. Jacomo Tamanti later held. Whether any of these men was Anna’s ancestor is not yet known.

Domenico Menchini’s books, 1675

The best clue to Anna’s own family is a household inventory of 1675, which Carle cites for the “many” books on a shelf in the house of Sig. Domenico Menchini. Anna was born about 1671, and her father was dead by 1702, when her son Ermenegildo was baptized as the grandson of “the late Domenico Menchini”. Whether the Domenico of 1675 was her father, and whether the inventory was drawn up because he had died leaving young children in the care of the town’s magistrate for wards, is exactly what the document itself should show. It has not yet been read.

A house on the Mattonato, 1708

The fullest picture of a Menchini household comes from an inventory made on 27 November 1708 for the wards of Dr. Alessandro Menchini and his wife Celia. Their house stood on the Mattonato, the brick-paved street of parade that is today Via Soccorso Saloni, the street of Palazzo Tamanti, and Carle used its main floor as her example of how a leading family displayed its rank. In her summary the hall and bedrooms were hung with leather and furnished with walnut armchairs, a great table, many framed pictures and brass candlesticks; the family silver included a basin with the Menchini arms, and Celia’s chests held fashionable gowns in scarlet and velvet beside older embroidered ones. How Alessandro was related to Anna, and who his children were, the inventory itself should tell.

Branches that rose and fell

Not every branch kept its rank. Carle gives the Menchini as an example of a house whose branches belonged to different orders: by the middle of the eighteenth century the branch of Stefano, son of Emilio, was no longer admitted to office, having come down in the world by working at the crafts. A Costanza, daughter of the late Emilio Menchini, married Giovanni Battista Donnoli in the church of Santa Lucia on 26 October 1710.

A Menchini also sat in judgment over the Tamanti. Giovan Battista Menchini, a Montalcino doctor of both laws, took charge of the cathedral parish in 1741 and died on 9 May 1762. Very probably the same man, as the bishop’s vicar general, gave the sentence of 4 September 1749 in the suit between the Augustinian friars and Ermenegildo Tamanti, Dr. Jacomo’s heir, over an old debt Jacomo had paid off; he found for Ermenegildo.

Anna and the altar

In 1699 Dr. Jacomo and Anna gave the right-hand altar of the sanctuary of the Madonna del Soccorso, dedicated to the Virgin, Saint Gaetano and Saint Carlo Borromeo; the inscription spells her name “Mechini”. As the wife of the hospital’s rector she was also its rettrice, its rectress. Her husband’s story is told on his own page: Dr. Jacomo Cosimo Tamanti (1649–1710).

Still to find

The 1675 inventory of Domenico Menchini, for his widow, children and guardians; the 1708 inventory of Dr. Alessandro Menchini, for the names of his children; Anna’s marriage of 1689 and her parents’ names in full; and the link, if any, between Anna’s line and the other Menchini households.

Sources

This page is drawn from the Palazzo Tamanti storybook (version 2.39, October 2026), chapter “The Menchini: the house Anna brought to the Tamanti”, where every fact carries a full archival reference. Back to the Tamanti family history.