“The Etruscans, as everybody knows, were the people who occupied the middle of Italy in early Roman days and whom the Romans, in their neighbourly fashion, wiped out entirely in order to make room for Rome with a very big R. They couldn’t have wiped them all out, there were too many of them. But they did wipe out the Etruscan existence as a nation and as a people. However, this seems to be the inevitable result of expansion with a big E, which is the sole raison d’etre of people like the Romans.” D.H. Lawrence.
Archaeological Timeline of Etruscan Art.
1723- publication of T. Dempster’s posthumous “De Etruria regali libri septem”
1739- campaign of excavations opened in Volterra.
1761- Museo Guarnacci founded in Volterra.
1827 onwards- excavations of tombs of Tarquinia
1828-9. Finds at Orvieto, Cerveteri, Chiusi, Veii, and others.
1828-9- Alexandre François discovered the “Monkey Tomb” at Chiusi.
1857- Francois tomb discovered at Vulci.
1870. Museo Archeologico in Florence inaugurated.
1881 onwards- Exploration of necropolis of Tarquinia by G. Ghirardini.
1932- D. H. Lawrence’s Etruscan Places published.
Types of Etruscan Art.
A. Sculpture: Stone; Bronze; Terracotta; Hellenistic Ash Urns
B. Painting: Wall Painting; Vase Painting.
C. Pottery: urns, askoi, amphorae.
Religion & The Etruscan Way of Dying.
In order to understand Etruscan art, it is necessary to know something about their religion. It differed from the beliefs of the Greeks and Romans, and in some ways approached the religion of the East in spirit.[1] Etruscan culture suffered much neglect at the hands of Greek and Roman authors because “they found them disturbing.”[2] And if the Etruscan ritual was alluded to it would be under the rubric “disciplina etrusca, ”a wholly inadequate description of their religions and customs. The disciplina etrusca seems to have comprised three categories of books of fate. The first was that of the libri haruspicini, which dealt with divination from the livers of sacrificed animals; the second, the libri fulgurates, on the interpretation of thunder and lightning; the third, the libri rituales, which covered a variety of matters. They contained, as Festus says, "prescriptions concerning the founding of cities, the consecration of altars and temples, the inviolability of ramparts, the laws relating to city gates, the division into tribes, curiae and centuriae, the constitution and organization of armies, and all other things of this nature concerning war and peace. Among the libri rituales were also three further categories: the libri fatales, on the division of time and the life-span of individuals and peoples; the libri Acherontici, on the world beyond the grave and the rituals for salvation; and finally, the ostentaria, which gave rules for interpreting signs and portents and laid down the propitiatory and expiatory acts needed to obviate disaster and to placate the gods. What is known from their writings and iconography is that the Etruscans practiced divination; they were skilled in haruspicy, or examination of the liver- the “seat of life.” Like Eastern faiths they were fatalistic in nature, which permeated every aspect of daily life. Though Etruscan deities corresponded to the Greek and Roman pantheon, they were more abstract rather than individualised; this is true of art of the earlier “Orientalising” period- see below. The world of the gods was made up of Tinia (lord of the thunder, and hence similar to Zeus, Una (Juno) and Minerva (Athena). The Etruscan people were especially concerned with the afterlife, affirming their belief that the spirit of the dead man lived on in the tomb and hence required clothing, food, utensils and furniture. There is no other civilisation that really made the idea of death into a work of art. From the sixth-century B.C., the Etruscan’s conception of survival after death became more pessimistic and the modern fear of death “sets the seal” on their painting.
[1] Tony Spiteris, Greek and Etruscan Painting, (Heron Books, 1965), 81.
[2] Spiteris, Greek and Etruscan Painting, 81.
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