He was born in Ascoli Piceno in 1887. After studying law at the Sapienza University of Rome in 1910 he entered the foreign minister and was first posted to Berlin in 1912, before being transferred to Constantinople in 1913. There Taliani helped protect Italian citizens in the Ottoman Empire and spent the early part of World War I. In 1916 was transferred to the Italian embassy in Petrograd, Russian Empire, throughout the October Revolution until 1919. Taliani then worked at the foreign minister's office before being posted in London from 1921 to 1923, and then returning to Constantinople until 1928. Back in Rome he was appointed the head of the ceremonial office. In 1932 Taliani was at The Hague and in 1938 he was made head of the Italian diplomatic mission in the Republic of China. Initially he was accredited as the ambassador to Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government in the early stages of the Second Sino-Japanese War, which was later forced to move to Chongqing as Nanjing, the capital, fell to the advancing Japanese forces.