Etruscan

1. Etruscans
Historical periods organized like
Greek names
700 - 600 BCE – Orientalizing
600 - 480 BCE - Archaic
480 – 300 BCE - Classical
-Romans called them “Tusci” –
- modern day Tuscany

2. - Area is Etruria: central and
western Italy between Arno and
Tiber rivers
- Prosperous culture: iron, copper,
and silver
- Noted for their gold jewelry, and
sculpture

3. “The Etruscans, as
everyone knows, were the
people who occupied the
middle of Italy in early
Roman days and whom
the Romans, in their usual
neighborly fashion, wiped
out entirely.”
D.H. Lawrence 1929
Author of Lady Chatterly’s
Lover

4. Content:
Enjoyment of life; eating
drinking, dancing, often with
afterlife in mind

5. Style:
Some stiffness found in Archaic Greek
work, but with more animation,
movement & energy.
men & women shown as equals;
composite beasts

6. Model of typical Etruscan temple;
(6th Cent. BCE.) Archaic Period
- Part of a temple sanctuary dedicated to
Minerva (Athena)
- Etruscans pantheon of
gods/goddesses related to Greek and
Romans’
- Etruscan temple an ornate home for
deity’s cult image / votive statue
-
- Etruscan temple designs influenced by
Greek design, but very different
- Built out of wood and sun dried bricks
- permanence not important
-
- Etruscan temple design outlined in
Vitruvius’ treatise on classical
architecture, written at the end of the 1st
century BCE.

7. - Nearly square design
- Gabled wooden roof with overhang
-One entrance at front
(Greek temples same in front & back)
- narrow stairway to a podium
- Columns only in front (creating
porch); more widely spaced
- Doric-like, wood columns with bases
& no fluting
- Often 3 cellas for 3 main gods
- (Timia, Uni, Menrva)
- porch and cellas about the same size
(vs a large Greek cella)
Life-sized terracotta statues on top
- Statuary on peak was narrative
- Rarely had pediment statuary

8. Necropolis at
Cerveteri, Itally; 700-
150 BCE.
- monumental underground tombs cut in TUFA, volcanic soft rock
- built in a necropolis, Greek “City of the dead”
- tombs house ashes, not corpses
- Tholos mounds: rounded burial mounds of rock, covered with earth
- Treasures buried with ashes: gold, jewelry, vases, etc…
- items in tombs, reflect their increased level of trading and wealth

9. Etruscan Painting
Tomb of the Leopards, Tarquinia (480 - 470 B.C.)

11. - Men have dark skin,
- women have light skin
- Musicians play double flute and lyre
- Open air, images of nature around
banqueters
-
- Large exaggerated hands gesticulating
on all figures
-
- A celebration of life: food, wine, music
dancing
- Not about death
- not about outfitting the Ka in the
afterlife
STYLE:
Some figures composite view, some
naturalistic profile (flute player)
figures are happy or animated; have a
sense of vitality

12. Tomb of “Triclinium” (means dining table or couches)

13. Tomb of Triclinium

14. Apollo from Veii, terracotta (c. 510- 500 B.C.) (5’11”
tall)
 -Rooftop temple statue
 -One in group of four
 -Folds (asymmetrical) like Kore
 -Brightly painted like Korai

15.  -Like Kori but swelling contours, motion, and gesture in arms
 -Animated face

16. Sarcophagus with reclining couple from Cerveteri, terracotta;
(c. 520 B.C.) (3’10” tall)

17. -Sarcophagus: large coffin
-Cast in four sections and joined
-Etruscan wives had freedom, retained
own names, owned property
-No parallel in Greece (no Greek tombs
big enough to house sarcophagus this
size)
-Husband and wife sharing a
banqueting couch -Both eating,
drinking, watching performance
together
-Uniquely Etruscan; In Greece, men
and women did not eat together
Sarcophagus with reclining couple

18. OTHER ETRUSCAN WORKS:
Capitoline Wolf, hollow cast bronze (c. 500- 480 B.C.)
(31” tall)

19. “One of most memorable portrayals of an animal in history of art”
-She wolf who nursed Romulus and Remus after they were abandoned as infants
-Founding heroes of Rome, made for Rome when created
-Etruscan but became symbol of Rome
-Infants added later-probably Renaissance

20. Chimera of Arezzo,
bronze,
(c. early 4th Cent. B.C.)
(31” tall)
-Composite beast
-Chimera: a Greek monster
with head and body of lion,
tail of serpent
-2nd head, goat, grows out of
a wound inflicted by Greek
hero who slew beast
-Animated, alive, gestural,
energetic, nervous

21. Fibula with Lions from Regolini-Galassi Tomb, Cerveteri (650-640
BCE)

22. - Gold: 11 ½” high, 11” wide
- gold mined in Egypt, parts of Africa, Saudi
Arabia, Yemen
- reflective of wealth and status
fibula: clasp or safety pin used to pin a gown
or mantle at the shoulder
- part repousse: pounded metal over
wooden mold
- part granulation: fusing of tiny metal
balls/granules to metal surface
- five Orientalizing lions on front
- lower part, 55 ducks sculpted in the round,
then attached