Etruscan Art: Tomb Frescoes, Gold Grave Goods and Bronze Statues | Early European History And Religion

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ETRUSCAN ART

Etruscan tomb painting

According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art: “Much of what we know about the Etruscans comes not from historical evidence, but from their art and the archaeological record. Many Etruscan sites, primarily cemeteries and sanctuaries, have been excavated, notably at Veii, Cerveteri, Tarquinia, Vulci, and Vetulonia. Numerous Etruscan tomb paintings portray in vivid color many different scenes of life, death, and myth. [Source: Colette Hemingway, Independent Scholar, Seán Hemingway, Department of Greek and Roman Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, October 2004, metmuseum.org \^/]

“From very early on, the Etruscans were in contact with the Greek colonies in southern Italy. Greek potters and their works influenced the development of Etruscan fine painted wares , and, consequently, new types of Etruscan pottery were created during the Orientalizing period (ca. 750–575 B.C.) and subsequent Archaic period (ca. 575–490 B.C.). The most successful of these pottery styles is known as Bucchero, characterized by its shiny black surface and preponderance of shapes that emulate metal prototypes. An Etruscan dedication at the Greek sanctuary of Delphi attests to the close interaction between the Greeks and the Etruscans in the Archaic period. The Etruscans particularly prized finely painted Greek vases, which they collected in great numbers. Likewise, their interest in Greek art and culture is manifest in works by Etruscan artists. However, the adaptation of Greek iconography to Etruscan art is complex and difficult to interpret. \^/

“Etruria, the region occupied by the Etruscans, was rich in metals, particularly copper and iron. The Etruscans were master bronze smiths who exported their finished products all over the Mediterranean. Finely worked bronzes, such as thrones and chariots decorated with exquisite hammered reliefs, cast statues and statuettes, as well as ornate vessels, mirrors, and stands, attest to the high quality achieved by Etruscan artists, particularly in the Archaic and Classical (ca. 490–300 B.C.) periods. Opulent jewelry of gold and semi-precious stones exemplifies eastern Greek and Levantine forms adapted to Etruscan taste. Extensive trade in the Mediterranean during this period supplied artists with exotic materials such as ivory, amber, ostrich eggs, and semi-precious stones, all of which fostered the development of Etruscan gem engraving and other arts. The Etruscans were also well known for their terracotta freestanding sculpture and architectural reliefs. Etruscan funerary works, particularly sarcophagi and cinerary urns , often carved in high relief, comprise an especially rich source of evidence for artistic achievement during the Late Classical and Hellenistic periods.

Examples of Etruscan Art

Etruscan mural of Typhon

Etruscan art includes monumental tombs, tomb paintings, painted vases, urns with reliefs, bronze mirrors, gold and silver jewelry and alabaster, terra cotta and limestone figurines.The Etruscans produced great tomb art, bronzes and terra-cotta sculptures. The Etruscan Museum of Tarquinia has many fine pieces including a room full of magnificent sarcophagi topped by reclining figures and sometimes etched with puzzling epigraphs that scholars have had difficulty deciphering. There are also funeral urns and vases. The most beautiful vase is an imported one from Greece that contains an image of a woman's head with a beguiling expression.. Most of the prize pieces are at the Villa Giulia in Rome.

The Etruscans also made intriguing, highly-stylized narrow bronze figures that were offered as votive offerings at temples; realistic, detailed equestrian statues; lovely and distinct “ bucchero” pottery, which were deliberately fired to look like metal.

There is evidence of monumental art, including bold reliefs and some of the earliest architectural terra cottas. The Etruscans built large acropolises and the largest buildings in Italy before the 6th century B.C. The only impressive monument left is the fortified city gate of Porta Augusta in Perugia from the second century B.C. Porta Augusta is also important in that it is one of the oldest places in Italy with an arch.

The Etruscans were among the leading importers of Greek vases. Some of the most beautiful Greek vases found by archaeologists have been unearthed at Etruscan sites.

Etruscan Tomb Art

Tomb paintings include images of funeral ceremonies, athletic competitions, bloody duels, grand banquets, warriors and horsemen, demons and mythical creatures, and journeys to the next world. There are images of bearded snakes, dolphins, flocks of birds, musicians, wild dancers and jugglers. The vibrant colors were created with an array of pigments, some of them quite rare and expensive: white from calcite, red from hematite, black from charcoal, yellow from goethite, and blue from a mixture if silica, lime, copper and a special alkali imported from Egypt.

Few of the tombs with wall paintings are open to the public. Once a sealed tomb has been opened the paintings decays rapidly in the humidity. One tomb called the Tomb of the Leopards has beautiful wall paintings that depict nude wrestlers, men playing musical and a banqueting couple looking upon an egg, a symbol of immortality.

The Etruscan Museum in the Vatican contains one of the world's best collections of Etruscan art. The most outstanding pieces, which were found in Etruscan tombs in Tuscany and Lazio, include gold and silver jewelry, dice that looks just like modern dice, chariots, vase paintings, and small sarcophagi that held the cremated remains of wealthy Etruscans. Among the highlights are lovely Etruscan painting and a bronze statue of boy from the Etruscan site of Tarquina.

Chimera of Arezzo

The Chimera of Arezzo is regarded as the best piece of existing ancient Etruscan art. Part lion, goat, and snake, it is 5th-century B.C. bronze sculpture, described by British art historian David Ekserdjian as "one of the most arresting of all animal sculptures and the supreme masterpiece of Etruscan bronze-casting". It is currently kept by the National Archaeological Museum, Florence. [Source Wikipedia]

Made entirely of bronze and measuring 78.5 centimeters (2.7 feet) high and 129 centimeters (4.2 feet) in length, it was found alongside a small collection of other bronze statues in Arezzo, an ancient Etruscan and Roman city in Tuscany. The statue was originally part of a larger sculptural group representing a fight between a chimera and the Greek hero Bellerophon. This sculpture is likely to have been created as a votive offering to the Etruscan god Tinia.

The sculpture was probably commissioned by an aristocratic clan or a prosperous community and erected in a religious sanctuary near the ancient Etruscan town of Arezzo, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) southeast of Florence. Inscribed on its right foreleg is an inscription in the ancient Etruscan language. It has been variously deciphered, but most recently it is thought to read tinscvil "Offering belonging to Tinia". The original statue is estimated to have been created around 400 B.C..

Etruscan Crafts

National Etruscan Museum at Villa Giulia (Villa Borghese) in Rome is probably the finest Etruscan museum in the world. Among the treasures are a painted ostrich egg, imported from Africa but believed to have been painted in Etruria; a beautiful sarcophagus of married couple, which shows the husband gently caressing his wife on her arm and shoulder; a statue of a satyr with a taller woman doing a dance that bears an uncanny resemblance to the 1970s’s dance, the bump; pair of wooden sandals imprinted with the owners toeprints; and a burial urn shaped like a thatched hut. Among the gold items are a necklace with two pendants of chubby woman's face and a third implanted with an onyx that looks like a human eyeball; and a broach decorated with a werewolf-like hoofed satyr with a is granulated background, an effect that jewelers today can't duplicate. The most important pieces are three gold tablets; two of which are inscribed in Etruscan and the third in Phoenician, the language of Carthage. The Etruscan language still hasn't been completely deciphered.

Archeological Museum in Florence has one of the best Etruscan collections outside of Rome's Villa Giulia. It contains Roman Etruscan pieces once housed in the Uffizi. One particularly amazing bronze statue shows a charging lion with a goat coming out of its back that in turn is being grabbed by the lion's tail which is a serpent. Also check out delightful Etruscan bronze of a boy's head and youth with the bare-breasted Demon of Death. The Egyptian

Etruscan bronze boxes known as cistae have been found in tombs. They are very large and are elegantly decorated with engraved scenes. They seem to have been a kind of dressing-case, for holding all of a lady’s toilet equipment. A small one was included in the tomb furniture of an Etruscan woman. Etruscan mirrors most frequently have handles but no covers, and are decorated with engraved scenes, usually taken from Greek mythology. Another charming stand of Etruscan workmanship. There is a pretty terracotta statuette of a lady using a mirror; she is arranging her hair while balancing her mirror on her knee. [Source: “The Daily Life of the Greeks and Romans”, Helen McClees Ph.D, Gilliss Press, 1924]

Fresco in the Tomb of the Augurs

Burial Crown and Gold Earrings Found in Undisturbed Etruscan Tomb

Jason Urbanus wrote in Archaeology Magazine: Researchers from the collaborative IMPERO project, which traces the movement of people along the Ombrone River in Tuscany, have unearthed a rare Etruscan grave that had remained undisturbed for 2,400 years. The discovery was made near the site of Podere Cannicci, which was an agricultural village and rural sanctuary in the late Etruscan and Roman Republican periods. The circular tomb, which measures five feet in diameter, was cut into a hillside and located just a foot beneath the surface. [Source: Jason Urbanus, Archaeology Magazine, January/February 2023

Although the Romans took control of the area around 294 B.C., the second-century B.C. grave is evidence that local inhabitants retained their Etruscan identity more than a century later. The burial included urns that held the cremated remains of two people who were interred with a full assemblage of ceramic vessels that represent a typical Etruscan funerary banquet.

Other grave goods included gold earrings, bronze rings, and iron strigils, tools used to scrape the skin clean. The urn holding one individual, perhaps the patriarch of a wealthy local family, also contained a crown fashioned from gold-covered bronze olive leaves and pins. “The decoration pattern of the crown recalls these people’s engagement with agriculture, which was most likely their primary source of wealth,” says University at Buffalo archaeologist Alessandro Sebastiani. Researchers believe the second urn may have held the remains of the patriarch’s son.

Extraordinary Etruscan Bronze Statues Found at Ancient Thermal Spring

In November 2022, Italy’s Ministry of Culture announced that archaeologists excavating an ancient sanctuary in Tuscany had discovered more than two dozen 2,300-year-old Etruscan bronze figures in an ancient Tuscan thermal spring and said the find would “rewrite history” about the transition from the Etruscan civilization to the Roman Empire. Nicole Winfield of Associated Press wrote: The discovery, in the sacred baths of the San Casciano dei Bagni archaeological dig near Siena, is one of the most significant ever in the Mediterranean and certainly the most important since the 1972 underwater discovery of the famed Riace bronze warriors, said Massimo Osanna, the Culture Ministry's director of museums. [Source: Nicole Winfield, Associated Press, November 8, 2022]

Etruscan Ivy wreath

Thanks to the mud that protected them, the two-dozen figurines and other bronze objects were found in a perfect state of conservation, bearing delicate facial features, inscriptions and rippled tunics. Alongside the figures were 5,000 coins in gold, silver and bronze, the ministry said. As evidence of the importance of the find, the ministry announced the construction of a new museum in the area to house the antiquities. Jacopo Tabolli, who coordinated the dig for the University for Foreigners in Siena, said the discovery was significant because it sheds new light on the end of the Etruscan civilization and the expansion of the Roman Empire in today's central Italy between the 2nd and 1st centuries B.C.

The period was marked by wars and conflicts across what is today’s Tuscany, Umbria and Lazio regions, and yet, the bronze statues show evidence that Etruscan and Roman families prayed together to deities in the sacred sanctuary of the thermal springs. The statues, including depictions of Apollo and Igea, the ancient Greek god and goddess of health, bear both Etruscan and Latin inscriptions. “While there were social and civil wars being fought outside the sanctuary ... inside the sanctuary the great elite Etruscan and Roman families prayed together in a context of peace surrounded by conflict,” Tabolli said. “This possibility to rewrite the relationship and dialectic between the Etruscan and Romans is an exceptional opportunity.”

Some of the two dozen bronzes are entire human-like figures of deities, while others are of individual body parts and organs which would have been offered up as votive offerings to the gods for intervention for medical cures via the thermal waters, the ministry said in a statement. “This is almost an X-ray of the human insides from the lungs to the intestines,” said Osanna, gesturing to a lung at the restoration laboratory where the bronzes are being treated. "There are ears and other anatomical parts like hands. So, all these things that curative waters and the intervention of the divinities would have been able to save.” The find represents the largest deposit of bronzes from this era in Italy, notable also because most surviving antiquities from the period are primarily in terracotta, the ministry said.

Do the Etruscan Bronze Statues Found at Ancient Thermal Spring "Rewrite History"

The 2,300-year-old Etruscan bronze figures at San Casciano die Bagni made up the largest concentrated collection of bronze statues ever found in Italy. Excavations at the site have been led by archaeologist Dr. Jacopo Tabolli, a professor at the University for Foreigners in Siena since 2019. Candida Moss wrote in the Daily Beast; The bronzes were in impeccable condition because mud works as one of nature’s preservatives: in the past it has suspended body parts, fossils, and even a whole village in its embrace. Had the bronzes been open to the elements their inscriptions would have been eroded long ago.[Source: Candida Moss, Daily Beast, November 13, 2022]

Among the bronzes were depictions of deities including Apollo, Fortuna, and Hygeia (the last was the goddess of health). Many of the statues included Etruscan and Latin inscriptions that mentioned the names of affluent families. Alongside these, scientists discovered bronze carvings of body parts and organs. Similar sculptures, known as votives, have been found at healing shrines and temples all over the ancient Mediterranean. Their presence here suggests that the thermal spring around which the spa was built functioned as a healing center that attracted medical tourists. In addition to all of the sculptures and inscriptions, archaeologists found 5,000 gold, silver, and bronze coins.

a San Casciano dei Bagni bronze statue in the mud

The discoveries at the thermal springs provide information about cultural exchange during an important period of military, political, and social conflict.The Romans and Etruscans were engaged in a series of wars that lasted hundreds of years. The conquest of Etruria is generally agreed to have been completed by 264 B.C., with the last Etruscan cities formally being absorbed into Rome by 27 B.C.. This is generally thought of as a tense period of social and political upheaval, but in the space inside the springs Romans and Etruscans happily cohabitated. As Tabolli puts it, “Even in historical epochs in which the most awful conflicts were raging outside, inside these pools and on these altars the two worlds, the Etruscan and Roman ones, appear to have coexisted without problems.”

Since the San Casciano bronzes were announced there has been a slew of articles touting this as a discovery that will “rewrite” or even “change history.” This rather bold statement has provoked some confusion about what, exactly, is being changed by this find. It’s a bit early to say, but there are two aspects of the discovery that make it significant. The first is the context of the discovery. Christians sealed the pools of the ancient (pagan) spa in the fifth century with heavy stone pillars, but they left the statues inside. The mud protected the bronzes from decay and the sealing of the space means that this is the only trove of ancient Italian statues the origins of which we can fully reconstruct. In contrast to most ancient sculptures, we know that the bronzes stood together in this exact space. We can develop theories about the artistic program and their significance. Moreover, we can read the names of those who donated and dedicated the bronzes and that allows us to build a more nuanced picture of the social interactions between Romans and Etruscans in this transitory period.

Subterranean Etruscan Pyramids

In 2012, U.S. and Italian archaeologists announced that had found the first ever Etruscan pyramids underneath a wine cellar in the city of Orvieto in central Italy.Rossella Lorenzi wrote in Discovery News: “Carved into the rock of the tufa plateau –a sedimentary area that is a result of volcanic activity — on which the city stands, the subterranean structures were largely filled. Only the top-most modern layer was visible. “Within this upper section, which had been modified in modern times and was used as a wine cellar, we noticed a series of ancient stairs carved into the wall. They were clearly of Etruscan construction,” David B. George of the Department of Classics at Saint Anselm, told Discovery News. [Source: Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News, September 19, 2012]

“As they started digging, George and co-director of the excavation Claudio Bizzarri of the Parco Archeologico Ambientale dell’Orvietano noted that the cave’s walls were tapered up in a pyramidal fashion. Intriguingly, a series of tunnels, again of Etruscan construction, ran underneath the wine cellar hinting to the possibility of deeper undiscovered structures below. After going through a mid-20th century floor, George and Bizzarri reached a medieval floor. Immediately beneath this floor, they found a layer of fill that contained various artifacts such as Attic red figure pottery from the middle of the 5th Century B.C., 6th and 5th century B.C. Etruscan pottery with inscriptions as well as various objects that dated to before 1000 B.C.

“Digging through this layer, the archaeologists found 5 feet of gray sterile fill, which was intentionally deposited from a hole in the top of the structure. “Below that material there was a brown layer that we are currently excavating. Intriguingly, the stone carved stairs run down the wall as we continue digging. We still don’t know where they are going to take us,” Bizzarri told Discovery News. The material from the deepest level reached so far (the archaeologists have pushed down about 10 feet) dates to around the middle of the fifth century B.C. “At this level we found a tunnel running to another pyramidal structure and dating from before the 5th century B.C. which adds to the mystery,” George said.

Frescoe in the Tomb of the Augurs

“The subterranean pyramids in Orvieto could offer a unique insight into this civilization as the structures appear to be unique. “The caves have indeed a shape unknown elsewhere in Etruria,” Larissa Bonfante, professor emerita of classics at New York University and a leading expert on the ancient Etruscans, told Discovery News. According to Bizzarri, there are at least five Etruscan pyramids under the city. Three of these structures have yet to be excavated. “Clearly, they are not quarries or cisterns. I would say that there is nothing like these structures on record anywhere in Italy,” Bizzarri said. According to George, the underground pyramids could represent some sort of a religious structure or a tomb. In both cases, it would be a discovery without precedent. “Most likely, the answer waits at the bottom. The problem is we don’t really know how much we have to dig to get down there,” Bizzarri said.”

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, The Louvre, The British Museum

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Rome sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Late Antiquity sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; “Outlines of Roman History” by William C. Morey, Ph.D., D.C.L. New York, American Book Company (1901) ; “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932); BBC Ancient Rome bbc.co.uk/history/ ; Project Gutenberg gutenberg.org ; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Live Science, Discover magazine, Archaeology magazine, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, The New Yorker, Wikipedia, Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopedia.com and various other books, websites and publications.

Last updated October 2024