Among canon of
classical orders of
classical architecture, the
Tuscan order's place is due to the influence of the Italian
Sebastiano Serlio, who meticulously described the five orders including a "Tuscan order", "the solidest and least ornate", in his fourth book of
Regole generali di architettura sopra le cinque maniere de gli edifici (1537). Though
Fra Giocondo had attempted a first illustration of a Tuscan capital in his printed edition of Vitruvius (1511), he showed the capital with an
egg and dart enrichment that belonged to the
Ionic order. The "most rustic" Tuscan order of Serlio was later carefully delineated by
Andrea Palladio. From the perspective of these writers, the Tuscan order was an older primitive Italic architectural form, predating the Greek
Doric and Ionic, associated by Serlio with the practice of
rustication and the architectural practice of
Tuscany.
Giorgio Vasari made a valid argument for this claim by reference to
il Cronaca's graduated rustication on the facade of
Palazzo Strozzi, Florence. Like all
architectural theory of the Renaissance, precedents for a Tuscan order were sought for in
Vitruvius, who does not include it among the three canonic orders, but peripherally, in his discussion of the
Etruscan temple (book iv, 7.2-3). Later Roman practice ignored the Tuscan order, and so did
Leon Battista Alberti in
De re aedificatoria (shortly before 1452).