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THE BEAUTY OF ETRUSCAN ART HAS ENDURED FOR OVER 2500 YEARS
Yet its Origins Remain Steeped in Mystery and Controversy
By: Stephen Beiner
I am not at all sure that I believe in reincarnation, but if I did live
in an earlier life, I very well might have been an Etruscan. When I
made my first trip to Florence over twenty years ago, I immediately fell
in love with the city and the surrounding Tuscan hills. I returned to
Florence many times thereafter, and eventually opened an office facing
the Duomo in the center of the city. Most of all, I fell in love with
Etruscan art. Its strength, vibrance, elegance and simplicity continue
to move me as only very beautiful art can.
Beyond the beauty of the city, the Tuscan landscape, and the elegant
art, perhaps it is the underlying mystery of the Etruscans that also
intrigues me. Because their language is for the most part undeciphered,
we can only guess at who they were and from where they came. What we
do have is magnificent art and architecture from a people that we know
very little about.
There are some things that we do know about the Etruscans. We know that
at the time of their greatest power, between the 7th century BCE and
the 5th century BCE, Etruria probably embraced all of Italy, from the
Alps to the Tiber River. The ancient Romans called the people of the
country Etrusci or Tusci from which is derived the name of the modern Italian region of Tuscany, Toscana in Italian.
Attempts to identify the origins of the Etruscans have been
inconclusive. Even ancient traditions do not agree on where the
Etruscans came from, although no lack of speculation exists on the
subject, both in antiquity and in the present. The ancient Greek
historian Herodotus maintained that the Etruscans came from Lydia, an
ancient country in Western Asia Minor. The Roman historian Livy and the
Greek historian Polybius agreed. However, another ancient Greek
historian, Dionysus of Halicarnassus, believed that the Etruscans were
an indigenous Italian race.
The reason we know so little about the Etruscans is that their language
continues to be indecipherable. While they used the Greek alphabet, the
Etruscan language is nothing like Greek. One theory is that the
Etruscan language was a remnant of a once common language that became
extinct with the decline of the Etruscans. In 1954, at Pyrgi
near Rome, a gold tablet with bilingual texts in Etruscan and Punic was
discovered near a temple sight. Scholars hoped it would become the
Rosetta Stone for the Etruscans; unfortunately linguists cannot
understand the ancient Punic language either. The discovery of the
Zagreb mummy also led scholars to hope for a breakthrough in
understanding Etruscan. The mummy was wrapped in a linen shroud that
had 1200 Etruscan words written on it. Because so many of the words on
the shroud were repeated, scholars were not able to put them in context
and thereby interpret them. Scholars have been struggling with
translating Etruscan for centuries; writing in the 1st century BCE, the
Greek historian Dionysus called the Etruscan language "unlike any
other," noting the difficulties that have ever since hindered attempts
to translate its surviving fragments. The Etruscan language seems to
contain both Indo-European and non-Indo-European language elements as
well as traces of ancient Mediterranean dialects; it cannot be
classified into any known group of languages. One of the mysteries of
Etruscan civilization is why the written record is so sparse and why the
Romans wrote almost nothing about the Etruscan language or its
literature. Because no Etruscan literary works or references survive,
the people continue to remain intriguingly mysterious. What exists is
their great art forms, from which we have to intuit who they were.
Archeological discoveries have shed some light on early Etruscan
history. The first permanent settlements probably date to the end of
the 9th century BCE. At that level of excavation, new types of
sepulchers were found differing greatly from earlier burial structures
of the region and containing quantities of amber, silver, gold, and
Egyptian gem-work not found in any of the older tombs. The character of
their art and the many distinctive features of their religion now lead
scholars to believe that the original Etruscans were an Oriental or
Middle Eastern people. The conclusion of most archeologists therefore
is that the Etruscans did emigrate from a region in Asia Minor, if not
precisely from Lydia, as Herodotus supposed. The original homeland of
the Etruscans was probably between Syria and the Dardanelles.
One of the things that we do know about the Etruscans is how they
treated their women. Greeks were basically misogynists and the Romans
were chauvinistic. The Etruscans, on the other hand, treated their
woman well and apparently held them in high esteem. We see from Roman
literature that the Romans often accused the Etruscans of being too
submissive to their wives. In surviving tomb cities of the Etruscans,
the sarcophagus lids show the husband and wife in equal positions, often
in affectionate gestures, bordering on pornographic. One well-known
terracotta sarcophagus lid shows the figure of a man and a woman,
presumably his wife, reclining on a triclinium (dining couch), eating a
meal. Both figures are propped up on their left elbow, with the man
close behind the woman. Both faces share a secret, tender smile.
Of the little that is known about the Etruscans from their art, it is
clear that they were fond of music, games, and racing. The Etruscans
introduced the chariot into Italy. It also is clear that the Etruscans
were a highly religious people. Seeking to impose order on nature, they
established strict laws to govern the relations between people and the
gods. They did not approach religion with the scientific "rationalism"
of the Greeks; instead they superstitiously tried to influence the
afterlife of the dead by decorating their tombs as they did their
houses. Despite some educated guesses about their religious practices,
even this aspect of Etruscan civilization remains quite enigmatic.
Most of what is known about Etruscan religious practices comes from the
art that is associated with their burial and funerary customs. The
Etruscans were fond of decorating their sarcophagi with sculptures of
life-like humans in natural poses. A great variety of cinerary or
burial urns with magnificent sculpture and decoration have been found.
In this respect, Etruscan art was greatly influenced by that of the
Greek city-states, Corinth in particular. During the height of the
Etruscan civilization, Greek art itself was going through what art
historians refer to as the "Orientalising period." During the 8th
century BCE eastern influences were bringing a new direction to Greek
art, and so to Etruscan art. Most art historians characterize Etruscan
art as somewhat cruder or less mature than the contemporary Greek art in
style and execution. While some Etruscan art is copied from the
Greeks, the Etruscans left their own individual, indelible imprint on
the art they left behind, which is outstanding for its originality and
imagination.
The Etruscans, like most ancient people, did not regard art for its own
sake but created objects either for daily use or religious purposes.
Therefore no Etruscan artists are known by name and a few examples of
strictly public art or sculpture of size in durable stone exits.
Additionally, Etruscan art, while sharing general characteristics, is
clearly different from one city to the next, reflecting the political
independence of each. The most famous Etruscan works are in terracotta
(baked clay), which include not only sculptures on sarcophagi lids, but
artifacts from temples and sculptures. The Etruscan wealth and power
were in goodpart based on their knowledge of metalworking and their
exploitation of iron deposits that were abundant in Etruria. They
brought the older art of bronze working to a new height. The She-wolf
now in the museum in Rome and the Chimaera, now in the Museo
Archeologico in Florence, both made in the 5th century BCE, are
remarkable examples of bronze animal sculpture. Etruscan gold work was
among the finest anywhere in the ancient world. Etruscan art reached
its zenith in the late 7th century and early 6th century BCE; working in
bronze, the Etruscans made chariots, bowls, candelabra and polished
mirrors, all richly engraved with mythological motifs. The Etruscans
also crafted fine gold, silver and ivory jewelry, using filigree and
granulation. While the Etruscans first imported or copied painted Greek
pottery, they soon became expert at the potter's wheel. They
developed a distinctive polished black bucchero ware with delicately incised or relief decoration that suggested metalwork.
Etruscan art, while originally dependent upon Greek art, developed its
own quite complex forms. While recognizably Hellenized, the underlying
spirit of Etruscan art retained an energy quite different from its Greek
counterpart, which searched for precision. The Etruscans had a highly
developed sense of beauty and proportion; a careful appreciation of the
magnificent art that they left as their legacy provides us a small
window on their civilization and highly developed culture.