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Giovanni and Gianni Tamanti

Above the piazzetta that bears the family name, a marble plaque on the facade of Palazzo Tamanti honours a soldier. It is the most public trace the family has left on the house. Behind it are two men of the same name, a father and a son. Both were decorated for valour and both were killed in war, twenty-seven years apart. This page tells their stories separately, because they are easily confused.

The memorial on the facade

The plaque honours Lieutenant of Artillery Giovanni Tamanti, awarded the Gold Medal for Military Valour after his death. Its inscription describes how he commanded a self-propelled artillery battery during a dangerous counterattack. It records his death at Enfidaville, in Tunisia, on 20 April 1943. The Montalcino veterans’ association put up the memorial on 4 November 1966. The small square in front of the house carries his name.

Marble memorial plaque on the facade of Palazzo Tamanti
Marble memorial plaque on the facade of Palazzo Tamanti. Palazzo Tamanti owner photograph (Brian Pasch). Evidence P11.

The officer on the plaque is usually known by the familiar form of his name, Gianni, and that is how he appears in the gold-medal registers. His father, also Giovanni, was a separate man with a separate decoration, a Silver Medal won in the First World War.

Giovanni Tamanti (1881–1916): the father

Giovanni Tamanti was born in Montalcino on 6 April 1881 to Francesco Antonio Tamanti and Maria Giuliani (birth act, 1881, act 91). He married Francesca Barluzzi. He served in the First World War as a volunteer engineer officer. On 13 February 1916 he was killed while inspecting the front lines at Col di Lana. He was awarded the Silver Medal for Military Valour. He left three young children, and one of them, then six, was the future Gold Medal officer.

Birth of Giovanni Tamanti (later killed at Col di Lana, 1916)
Birth of Giovanni Tamanti (later killed at Col di Lana, 1916). Nati 1881, act 91. Evidence E19.

Giovanni’s parents tie him to the main family line. The Francesco Antonio Tamanti of Carle’s genealogy was born in 1852 and married Maria Giuliani in 1873 (Carle, La patria locale, 1996, p. 298). His name, dates and birthplace in Montalcino all agree with the military records. The link is high-confidence, but it still needs checking against the original civil and military acts. If it holds, the memorial connects the Tamanti of the nineteenth century directly to two generations of decorated soldiers.

Gianni Tamanti (1909–1943): the son

Gianni, formally Giovanni, was born in 1909 at Aulla, not in Montalcino. By the Second World War he was a lieutenant of artillery, commanding a battery of self-propelled anti-tank guns. On 20 April 1943 he was killed at Enfidaville, in Tunisia, defending that battery. He was awarded the Gold Medal for Military Valour. His life is recorded in the Italian gold-medal registers, the honours database of the Quirinale, and the Montalcino local press.

Twenty-three years later the town placed his memorial on the family house. At almost the same moment, in 1966, Brunello di Montalcino received DOC status, the start of the modern wine era in which other branches of the Tamanti family played a part.

Keeping the two men apart

The two men are easily confused. They share a name and a family, both were officers, and both died in war. The details separate them clearly:

Giuliana, and the cooperative of 1926

The storybook’s family line gives Giovanni and Francesca Barluzzi another child, Giuliana Tamanti. She married Giovanni Colombini (1906–1976), and their daughter Francesca Colombini (1931–2022) later led Fattoria dei Barbi’s expansion abroad. This connection is told in full in the Colombini section.

The family also appears in the interwar revival of Montalcino wine, though the storybook does not tie this to Giovanni’s household. A 1933 Siena wine handbook describes the Cooperative Cellars of Biondi-Santi & Co., founded in 1926 under Tancredi Biondi Santi. It names “Tamanti” among the leading farming companies taking part (translation reproduced by Do Bianchi, 2012). In 2011 Franco Biondi Santi recalled his father inviting landowning friends, among them Tamanti, into the venture, which he dated to 1927 (interview in Civiltà del Bere, 2011). Stefano Cinelli Colombini’s list of the founders does not include a Tamanti (Cinelli Colombini, Brunello, ritratti a memoria, 2021, pp. 97–103). We do not yet know which Tamanti took part, or whether they were a founding member. Only the cooperative’s original founding act and membership lists can settle it.

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