The celebrated butteri of Italy trace their history back 2,500 years. Gabrielle Saveri’s photography exhibit captures the history of Italy’s cowboys.
Beautiful bay-colored horses canter in the golden light of Tuscany. Riders with rough hands and proud faces work together in a dreamlike haze of dust, serious but with a sense of ease well-captured by the camera. Gray long-horned cattle lumber into rugged corrals. There’s a steely quality to the images, like the cowboys themselves — the celebrated butteri horsemen of Italy, who trace their history back 2,500 years to the pre-Roman era of the Etruscans.
Get an intimate glimpse inside their world at Italy’s Legendary Cowboys of the Maremma, a photography exhibit by Gabrielle Saveri on display through May 5 at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. “The iconic American cowboy has international and intercontinental antecedents and ancestors,” says Michael Grauer, the museum’s Curator of Cowboy Collections and Western Art. “There have been cattle herders in Asia, Africa, and Europe long before the first vaqueros in the Americas in the 1530s. The butteri of Italy are part of that great ‘cowboy tapestry’ worldwide.”
Gabrielle Saveri
Saveri is a photographer, writer, and artist based in Napa Valley, California. She first became interested in the butteri in the 1990s while working as a journalist in Rome. “I have always loved horses and I’ve ridden throughout the years,” she says. “Being Italian American, the moment I heard about these mysterious cowboys, I dreamed of going to ride with them, but I didn’t know how to find them.”
Almost two decades later, a chance encounter with another photographer provided the connection Saveri needed to track them down.
A few months later, she was riding alongside the butteri in their homeland of Maremma, a coastal region between Florence and Rome that stretches across southern Tuscany. The working cowboys move cattle and train horses in a landscape of rocky paths and rolling plains. Groves of pine trees rise above yellow wheat fields and grasses grow tall in summer meadows. Hay bales nestle under square Italian towers and open-air stables are roofed with curved Mediterranean tiles.
Fewer than 30 butteri are thought to exist today. Though widely admired across Italy, their way of life is threatened from multiple angles, including new European Union beef regulations and soaring grain prices caused by the war in Ukraine. Women have recently been allowed to join the group of cattle breeders and expert equestrians, whose traditions date back to the spread of agriculture on the Italian peninsula. Etruscan tombs from the sixth century B.C.E. depict mounted riders and charging bulls; the famed “Murlo cowboy” statue was found at an Etruscan archaeological site nearby.
La Mer — Butteri Wrestle a Maremmano Cow for Branding (PHOTOGRAPHY: Canino, Archival Pigment Print, 2019, 13" x 19," © Gabrielle Saveri. All Rights Reserved.)
More than two millennia of history isn’t the only thing that sets the butteri apart. The cowboys’ dapper sartorial style is both eye-catching and effortless: earth-tone cotton vests, dark brown leather boots, and unique narrow-rim hats. They ride on military-inspired saddles and carry hooked wooden sticks called mazzarellas to help open gates and herd cattle. Butteri also work with distinct maremmana cows and horses, which they rope in round wooden pens with large central stumps for support.
We’re welcomed into the butteri’s familiar-yet-unfamiliar world through Saveri’s rich treatment of textures: soft hides over rippling muscles, the easy tip of a straw hat, the mesmerizing grit of dirt and dust. Intriguing characters inhabit each frame; hardworking, hardscrabble all-business types — with slices of smiles peeking through. The metallic quality of the sunlight creates a multidimensional “pop” that complements the feeling of movement in the images, each conveying the magnificent beauty of the animals and the respect afforded them by the butteri.
“I have fallen in love with Maremma,” says Saveri, whose sensitive touch and obvious passion make her photography so arresting. “The butteri, like American cowboys, have a deep love for their horses and cattle, and their land,” she says. “Their practices, livestock and horses, and attire may be different from the Americans, but they both share their strong love of being cowboys — riding out in the open air, connecting with their horses and the natural world around them, and living according to the rich and colorful cowboy traditions of the world they were born into.”
Portrait of Two Riders (PHOTOGRAPHY: Pitigliano, Archival Pigment Print, 2016. 33" x 50," © Gabrielle Saveri. All Rights Reserved.)
The butteri may be struggling to save their ancient ways, but hope prevails. More than two dozen associations in Italy are dedicated to preserving butteri culture, as are the appassionati — devoted fans who are enamored with the cowboys, much like Saveri herself. They stage exhibitions, host Italianstyle rodeos, and offer farm stays for travelers who want to experience the butteri lifestyle and help with their daily tasks. It’s not for the weak-hearted; the tough work turns away many youths and would-be butteri. But not all.
Perhaps the hope for the butteri’s future is best encapsulated in Saveri’s photo of a young and eager rider on an inky-brown horse, his mazzarella staff ready for whatever comes next. It’s titled simply: Apprentice.
Italy’s Legendary Cowboys of the Maremma by Gabrielle Saveri is on display through May 5, 2024, at The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.
From our May/June 2024 issue.
HEADER IMAGE: Buttero (Pitigliano, Archival Pigment Print, 2016. 13” x 19,” © Gabrielle Saveri. All Rights Reserved.)
