Italian Cowboys Featured in UW American Heritage Center Exhibition

The Italian word for cowboy is “buttero” and, just like the English term, it refers to horse-riding figures who herd cattle and horses on horseback. They ride the wide Maremma -- a marshy grassland in Italy north of Rome along the western coast of Tuscany.

The University of Wyoming American Heritage Center (AHC) has recently opened a photographic exhibition -- on the “butteri” (plural) and their horse and cattle culture -- titled “Italy’s Legendary Cowboys of the Maremma.” UW’s AHC exhibition area is open from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

“Italy’s Legendary Cowboys of the Maremma” runs through Sunday, April 20. The center’s exhibitions will be closed during the holidays, from Saturday, Dec. 21, through Thursday, Jan. 2.

The Italian cowboy exhibition is the creation of photographer Gabrielle Saveri and draws upon her photographic exploration of the buttero culture in Tuscany. It features many butteri, men and women, along with their distinctive clothing, horsemanship and herding skills, and horse accoutrements.

While the term “Italy’s Cowboys” may remind many Americans of the “spaghetti westerns” of the 1960s -- which imitated American western movies but were filmed in Italy by Italian directors -- the buttero way of life comprises an Indigenous Italian culture.

Its heyday was the 19th century, but its origins and name go back 2,000 years to the time of the Roman Empire. Buttero clothing and hats, as well as the horse tack they used, originated within Italy and owe nothing to popular influences from the American West.

Saveri, a photographer, writer and artist based in San Francisco, Calif., the Napa Valley and Italy, has worked in the U.S. and abroad as a writer, reporter and television producer for leading national and international media companies.

“My current work involves photographing the beautiful and rich culture and traditions of Italy’s native cowboys, the butteri,” Saveri says on her website. “I am passionate about the environment, nature and wildlife. My work explores my relationship with the natural world.”

For more information, visit the UW AHC at www.uwyo.edu/ahc/.