Art History Today

On the Road with the Etruscans (10)

Telamone & Southwards

Our short Etruscan journey ends up the coast at Telamone in Tuscany (Etruscan name Tlamu) where on a promontory is found a continuation of the Theban saga unearthed at Pyrgi (above). Greek associations are rich here since Telamon was the father of Homer’s Ajax, hero of the Trojan War. Here in the museum stands another pedimental decoration (mid second century B.C) with a more diffuse narrative containing other heroes like blind Oedipus and Amphiaraos who was swallowed up by the earth as he ran away from Thebes. The expressive nature of this group suggests associations with the more famous Great Altar of Pergamum, but now the journey must return down the southern coast not only into modern territory like Naples, but also into another era- that of the Romans at Pompeii and other centres of Roman civilisation in southern Italy like Taranto.

On the Road with the Etruscans (9)

A Note on the Etruscan Banquet.

“On the right wall reclines a very impressive dark red man wearing a curious cap, or head-dress, that has long tails like long plaits. In his right hand he holds up an egg, and in his left is the shallow wine-bowl of the feast. The scarf or stole of his human office hangs from a tree before him, and the garland of his human delight hangs at his side. He holds up the egg of resurrection, within which the germ sleeps as the soul sleeps in the tomb, before it breaks the shell and emerges again.” D. H. Lawrence.

Though it might be thought that the banqueting scenes of the Etruscans have something in common with other civilisations like the Greek and Roman, nothing could be further from the truth. Neither Greek nor Roman diners would permit a woman to recline on a banqueting couch or triclinium; they would have to sit up straight in a chair at the symposium, the formal drinking party.[1] But we find rules of dining relaxed in Etruscan art where dark haired men and fair-haired women both recline as in the Tombs of the Lionesses and Leopards.[2] To complicate matters the scenes of feasting overlap with other themes like hunting and fishing, open air scenes which along with the presence of plants in this art have led archaeologists to suggest that some of these meals are occurring outside in some kind landscape which has associations with a pagan version of the garden of Eden- the “Etruscan version of Paradise mixed with Dionysiac memories.”[3] The afterlife in Orphic religion which influenced the Etruscans was condemned by Plato as a round of eternal inebriation; and the Romans thought the Etruscans were profligate and lovers of luxury.[4] Various explanations have been suggested to explain the banqueting scenes in Etruscan tombs: silent guests imply funeral games; the interlacements of dancers and the banquet might serve as a metaphor for “death as a journey.”[5] Could that be extended to the sailors and dolphins in a number of these tombs such as the Tomb of Hunting and Fishing, or are the banqueters already in the afterlife enjoying its benefits as Lawrence thought? For some, explanation inevitably destroys the charm of the Etruscan tombs which continue to serve as a screen onto which one’s fantasies and speculations might be projected. To most visitors to Tarquinia, the tombs present neither an iconographical conundrum nor evidence of Lawrence’s affirmation in the life-force, - but simply exist as art painted by an extinct race.

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[1] Spivey points out (Etruscan Art, 16) had “adopted the symposium from their Eastern neighbours.”

[2] Lawrence though these women might be hetaerae or courtesans (Etruscan Places, 137) because they had yellow hair, though it might simply signify less formal relations between the sexes in a banquet setting. Spivey (EA, 114) says that “genealogical inscriptions on later Tarquinia tombs make it clear that Etruscan women who participated in drinking were respectable enough.”

[3] Brendel, Etruscan Art, 270.

[4] Plato, The Republic, (Penguin, trans. Desmond Lee, 1953, rep 1987), 110: “After they have got them to the other world they sit down to a banquet of the Blest and leave them garlanded and drinking for all time…”

[5] Brendel, Etruscan Art, 271.

On the Road with the Etruscans (8)

Tarquinia 2: The Painted Tombs.

“Not until Pompeii is there such an effective survival of painting in the Classical world.” Nigel Spivey.

Apart from the royal tombs of Macedonia, the wall paintings in the Tarquinia tombs are the most impressive to have been vouchsafed to the eyes of modern viewers. This is in contrast to most of ancient painting: we know from sources that buildings like the Stoa (porch) in Athens were decorated by the cream of Greek artists like Parrhasios, Zeuxis, Apelles- but the sight of their achievements had been vanquished by time. Tarquinian tombs are different from those at Veii or Cerverteri: they are smaller, and are executed with a different technique. The former were simply painted onto the rock; the Tarquinian paintings however were the result of a more complicated process. Firstly, a thin screen of plaster wash was applied to the tufa (a form of limestone); drawings in charcoal and chalk were sketched and then dyes or paints used for colouring and minimal shading. Typical of the colours found at Tarquinia were reds, yellows and ochres, all extracted from local iron oxides. White came from kaolin; black from vegetables; blue and purple probably came from further afield, maybe at the coast; green came from malachite. Technique aside, the iconography of Tarquinia has proved perplexing to generations of archaeologists and scholars, though symbolic links with Greek imagery is plausible. Prevalent are scenes of banqueting of which the Etruscan elite were fond of indulging in, but there is obviously some linkage with funereal customs. Additionally, there are athletes, scenes of wrestling, scenes of hunting and fishing as in the “Tomb of Hunting and Fishing (above).” Whether we looking at a panorama of social life or something more allusive like the “Mystery” religions of antiquity is difficult to determine, though as Spivey notes only a few tombs contain overt references to religious practice as in the “Tomb of the Augurs.”[1]

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[1] Spivey, Etruscan Art, 109.

On the Road with the Etruscans (7)

Tarquinia 1: The Palazzo Vitelleschi.

“We soon saw Tarquinia, its towers pricking up like antennae on the side of a low bluff of a hill, some few miles inland from the sea. And this was once the metropolis of Etruria, chief city of the great Etruscan League. But it died like all Etruscan cities, and had a more or less medieval rebirth, with a new name. Dante knew it, as it was known for centuries as Corneto- Corgnetum or Cornetium- and forgotten was its Etruscan past.” D.H. Lawrence, Etruscan Places.”

After an altercation with Roman officials about his passport, Lawrence and his companion head north and arrive at the ancient city of Tarquinia, the most famous Etruscan centre because of its surviving painted tombs. Anxious to get to these, Lawrence is nevertheless persuaded by his friend to visit the Palazzo Vitelleschi first, an archaeological museum in the town. Now the Tarquinia National Museum, it was built between 1436 and 1439 for the Cardinal of Corneto, the former name of Tarquinia. Over time the Soderini family became its new owner and it was turned into a hotel. In 1900 it was acquired by the city of Tarquinia, which donated it to the Italian state in 1916 leading Lawrence to complain that it had been unnamed and then renamed by the Fascists. Amongst the Etruscan art on display here can be seen the relief of Winged Horses found at the Ara della Regina temple; various Etruscan reliefs with creatures like sphinxes and ducks; even Egyptian art like the Bocchoris Vase found in 1895 in a tomb in Tarquinia, evidence of long distance trade between Egyptians and Etruscans. More typically Etruscan are a number of sarcophagi such as the “Sarcophagus of the Magistrate” (above) which has an effigy of an old man lying upon a tomb with a document in his hand. On the tomb itself is a relief showing two figures with the “hammer of death” and two winged guides come to take the soul of the deceased. Lawrence tentatively identified this old man as an Etruscan lucamone, or prince-magistrate, though he also caustically qualified his observation by stating that the man was probably “already an official under Roman authority” since he did not hold a patera or mundum (a libation dish), but a scroll.[1]

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[1] Lawrence, Etruscan Places, 128.

On the Road with the Etruscans (6)

Pyrgi

As we move away from Cerverteri towards Tarquinia, we veer west sharply to the shores of the Tyrrhenian Sea to visit the small hamlet of Pyrgi, today the town of Santa Severa. Since 1964, when a series of gold lamina and bronze plaques were found, Pyrgi has been a site of intense archaeological activity. These plaques had inscriptions which were both Etruscan and Phoenician, thus linking the Etruscan goddess Uni not with the Greek Hera, but the Phoenician Astarte. Pyrgi was excavated by Giovanni Colonna who maintained that he had found evidence of the attack upon the port by the Tyrant of Syracuse, Dionysius in 384 B.C. More significantly, Pyrgi boasted two temples from which art has survived such as a terracotta pedimental decoration (above) supposedly showing the “Seven against Thebes,” or an episode from that Theban epic.

On the Road with the Etruscans (5)

Cerveteri.

“The whole room has been converted into one of art’s strangest still lifes- truly a natura morta; one walks into it, from post to post, with amazement.” Otto Brendel on the Tomb of the Reliefs.

Anybody in search of Etruscan art in Italy has a lot of centres to choose from, but in the south the most attractive to both archaeologist and tourist would be the coastal cities of Cerveteri, Tarquinia and Vulci. But a tour of southern Etruscan art must start in the Villa Giulia in Rome (the core of the Vatican Etruscan collection) where artefacts from Cerveteri are housed. These include the most famous: the “Sarcophagus of the Married Couple” which came from the Banditaccia necropolis at Cerverteri. Perhaps, with the exception of the Egyptians, the Etruscans had the most elaborate rituals for death including town planning for the cities of the dead! The couple stretch out on a piece of symposium furniture called a kline; the man holds out his hand as if expecting some gift; the woman originally may have held two objects, possibly a some fruit and a perfume flask.[1] The Banditaccia necropolis also had a number of plaques, now in the British Museum; some of these show figures in narratives which have been plausibly read as specific stories like the “Judgment of Paris” of “Theseus and the Minotaur”; or more cautiously, generic narratives like the “return of the hero.”[2] These plaques were discovered in 1874 and may have adorned the walls of a large reception room in the city. More intriguing, and more redolent of the enigmatic nature of Etruscan life is the “Tomb of the Reliefs” (above) at Cerveteri. Set in a deeply rock cut chamber with a high vault, this chamber has reliefs on pilasters showing everyday objects, militaria, animals such as a weasel catching a mouse, and magisterial thrones. Symbols of authority are to be seen such as the lituus (staff of authority) and a judgement seat, but the specific purpose of the chamber is unknown unless it was a state room for a noble family.

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[1] Spivey, Etruscan Art, 92.

[2] Ibid.

On the Road with the Etruscans (4)

The Etruscan & the Ionian in Italy.

“Some take the arrangement of columns belonging to the Tuscan order and apply it to buildings in the Corinthian and Ionic styles, and where there are projecting antae in the pronaos [ vestibule of a temple], set up two columns in a line with each of the cella [main centre of the temple] walls, thus making a combination of the principles of Tuscan and Greek buildings.” Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture,

The Etruscans had a league of cities (something like the renaissance network of city states or principalities) and encouraged trade amongst other cultures, though in no way could they be accused of having imperialist or colonial ambitions like the Greeks, Romans and other ancient civilisations. This is reflected in the history and exploits of the two civilisations. Looking at a map of ancient Italy, we can see the location of Greek settlements compared to the Etruscans: the Greeks (represented by green dots) came further south from Neapolis (Naples) to Segesta near Palermo in Sicily. The deepest the Etruscans penetrated was to Rome, with centres like Cerveteri and Veii (red dots) being the most southern. We could call the Greek states Ionian as they were created mainly by settlers from the Greek mainland who sailed across the Ionian Sea which lies off the toe and boot of Italy, though we should be cautious of seeing a strict parallel development.[1] By contrast the Etruscans were mainly grouped inland in Central Italy or along the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Making a contrast between the Etruscan and Ionian is purely arbitrary, but it is useful for giving us an idea of the geographical situation. However, it should constantly be borne in mind that this geographical opposition breaks down when it is transposed into art and architecture, despite, in the case of the latter, clear distinctions being made between the three main Greek architectural orders and the Tuscan (Etruscan). It was the Roman Vitruvius who described the proportions of Tuscan temples, in the process pointing out that they were meant to be approached from the side as well as the front.[2] A reconstruction of the Etruscan temple at Portonaccio at Veii (original c. 500 B.C.) (above) shows the austere Tuscan structure which can be contrasted with the Ionian though it imitates the acroteria (sky figures) of the Greeks which the Etruscans used to add more decoration to their severe and simple buildings.[3] Moreover, this temple was originally dedicated to a number of deities including the Apollo of Veii mentioned above (now in the Villa Giulia) and that particular figure has clear links with Greek statues of the god; it can be usefully compared with the Greek type known as the Kouros (young man); the profile of the Veii Apollo is Ionian, though that style was more suitable for temples of Juno, Diana and Bacchus.[4] However despite the Greek associations rightly identified by Spivey and Brendel, it is difficult not to agree with the latter on the unique character of this statue; where else in Archaic art is such an expressively enigmatic face to be found?[5]

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[1] Brendel, Etruscan Art, and references to “Ionian influence.”

[2] Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture, trans. Morris Hickey Morgan, (New York, 1960, orig. pub 1914), 120f.

[3] Spivey, Etruscan Art, 62.

[4] Vitruvius, Ten Books, 15: The construction of temples of the Ionic order to Juno, Diana, Father Bacchus, and the other gods of that kind, will be in keeping with the middle position which they hold; for the building of such will be an appropriate combination of the severity of the Doric and the delicacy of the Corinthian. The link between the Ionian order and Juno is made explicit in John Shute’s illustration of the Ionian in his The First and Chief Orders of Architecture (1563).

[5] Brendel, Etruscan Art, 242.

On the Road with the Etruscans (3)

The Etruscans & the Greeks in Italy.

“!But we can justifiably deplore the demeaning of interaction between one ancient culture and another, since this model of infallible Greek superiority owes more to anecdotes of modern Western colonialism than to the archaeological record.” Nigel Spivey. [1]

As stated above the standard against which Etruscan was judged was exclusively Greek art; but as Spivey’s quote indicates- taking on Berenson and other detractors of Etruscan culture- a great deal of what we call Etruscan art was produced by Greeks. Though the origins of the Etruscans are clothed in more mystery than the Greeks, it is believed that they were indigenous, not the result of immigration from the East. Current opinion on Etruscan origins is that the people of Central Italy in the Bronze Age- about 3000-1000 BC “should be considered the ethnic ancestors of those during the Iron Age (1000-1 BC) occupied the territory which the Romans called ‘Etruria’.[2] The Etruscans had their own language which did not fit into the linguistic family known as Indo-European, i.e. Greek, Sanskrit, Latin, Gaelic and Sanskrit. Most of what is known about Etruscan culture comes from Greek and Roman writers with their inevitable prejudices and misapprehensions. According to these sources we learn that the Etruscans seemed to have interacted with other cultures such as the Phoenicians who were great seamen and traders; this may have provided the conduit through which Greek art and artists flowed into the Etruscan settlements on the Italian mainland. Writing in his Politics, the Greek philosopher Aristotle praised both the Carthaginians and the Etruscans who had a robust trading agreements and alignment pacts for the purpose of mutual defence.[3] Aristotle referred to Carthaginians and Tyrrhenians, by which he meant by the latter peoples dwelling on the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea where many Etruscan centres have been, and continue to be excavated. For example, the settlement of Cerveteri has yielded up an impressive cluster of objects from the Regolini-Galassi Tomb excavated in the 19^th century. This was an interesting and revealing find because it contained artefacts by the hands of Greek and Phoenician craftsmen. Such objects as the a gold-disc fibula, gold bracelet and gold pectoral seemed to belonged to a wealthy family able to afford such things which may have served as symbols of “conspicuous consumption” as much as cultic objects. Perhaps the most spectacular find from this tomb is a gilded silver bowl (above) with hunting scenes circling round fantastic beasts. Though it might be tempting to call the finds from the Regolini-Galassi Tomb “Greek,” the situation is more complex than that. For Otto Brendel, the fibula was “an Etruscan variant of the common Orientalizing animal style.”[4]

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[1] Spivey, Etruscan Art, Thames and Hudson, 1997, 11.

[2] Ibid, 7.

[3] Aristotle, Politics, Penguin Classics, 1962, 196.

[4] Otto J. Brendel, Etruscan Art, (Yale University Press, 1995, orig pub by Penguin 1978), 57.

On the Road with the Etruscans (2)

On the Road with D.H. Lawrence and the Etruscans.

“…there is really next to nothing to be said, scientifically, about the Etruscans. Must take the imaginative line.” D.H. Lawrence, letter of 1926.

Archaeologists would certainly not agree with Lawrence’s research conclusion that imagination would constitute a legitimate form of enquiry into Etruscan art. Such a lack of empirical methodology would be dismissed as romantic and unrealistic to say the least. Nevertheless, despite the obvious problems with Lawrence’s account of Etruscan art, he cannot be ignored. He is one of the first real English traveller-writers to not only praise the Etruscans, but to literally go off the beaten-track searching out their tombs in 1927, before a lot of their contents found their way into museums, though this process- to Lawrence’s disgust- had already started. Yet to put this context: Lawrence was further along a road beaten out by a number of Victorian and European wayfarers who sought out the tombs and towns of this enigmatic race (above). In 1828 K.O. Muller had published Die Etrusker (without setting foot in Italy); Mrs Hamilton Gray’s Tour to the Sepulchres of Etruria in 1839 had enjoyed minor success in 1841; and there was George Dennis’s Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria (1848) which went to a third edition in 1883. Before these Victorian explorers there had been “Etruscamania” in earlier centuries as we shall see in later weeks when we look at the antique revival in Southern Italy in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Suffering badly from tuberculosis which eventually killed him, Lawrence took a tour of the Etruscan locales in Italy which resulted in his posthumous Etruscan Places. A friend of Huxley, and both on the outer reaches of the Bloomsbury circle, Lawrence’s enthusiasm for the Etruscan race was at odds with that cultural group.[1] Bloomsbury’s greatest apostle of modern art- Roger Fry- was scathing about Etruscan art, which as Spivey says is very curious given Fry’s interest in primitivism in which he saw echoes of in modern art.[2] George Orwell saw Lawrence’s fascination with the Etruscans as anti-modernist: “When Lawrence prefers the Etruscans (his Etruscans) to ourselves it is difficult not to agree with him, and yet, after all, it is a species of defeatism , because that is not the direction in which the world is moving.”[3] Maybe, like Orwell, Fry’s distaste for Etruscan art is explained by the view that he saw it as anti-modern.

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[1] Huxley’s fictional portrait of Lawrence in the character of Rampion in his 1927 novel Point Counterpoint has Rampion say: “They [the Etruscans] were civilised…they knew how to live harmoniously and completely, with whole being.”

[2] Spivey, Etruscan Art, 192. Spivey quotes Roger Fry in Last Lectures: “If we judge of art by the kind of life which it suggests to us, by its moral elevation or nobility of sentiment, all Etruscan art must be condemned.”

[3] The full quote comes from Orwell’s essay, “Inside the Whale” (1940): “But what he is demanding is a movement away from our mechanical civilisation, which is not going to happen. Therefore his exasperation with the present turns once more into idealism of the past, this time a safely mythical past, the Bronze Age. When Lawrence prefers the Etruscans (his Etruscans) to ourselves it is difficult not to agree with him, and yet, after all, it is a species of defeatism, because that is not the direction in which the world is moving.”

On the Road with the Etruscans (1)

“The Greeks took the road that led to Michelangelo and Bernini and Thorvaldsen and Rodin. A rake’s progress. These Etruscans were on a better track. If only people had had the sense to follow it! Or at least get back to it. But nobody has, except perhaps poor old Maillol. They’ve all allowed themselves to be seduced away.” Aldous Huxley, “After the Fireworks.”

Taking the Etruscan Road.

These lines, spoken by a character in a short story by Aldous Huxley, reveal a view of art history that was, to say the least, uncommon, and indeed rather recherché in the twentieth-century.[1] Through his English writer character admiring the Etruscan statue of the Apollo of Veii in the Villa Giulia in Rome, Huxley was sharing a view with his readers that would have been scorned by art historians who had mapped out their own view of artistic development in Italy. Take Bernard Berenson for example. The Sage of I Tatti lived in a region of Italy, near Florence, that once was Etruscan territory; but despite this he ignored Etruscan art, equating it with the Phoenicians, both of which Berenson regarded as “paste and scissor craftsmen.”[2] And Berenson inevitably compared the Etruscans with the Greeks, a calculus that survives to this day with the former dismissed as inferior. To some extent Berenson may have been repeating the views of the Renaissance period that was invariably inspired by Greco-Roman culture and if aware of Etruscan art would have noted it as an aberrant curiosity; it should be noted however, despite Huxley seeing him as a continuation of the Greco- Roman that Michelangelo was hardly oblivious of Etruscan art being a Florentine. However, the influence of Etruscan culture on schools of art becomes more visible in the 17^th century where we detect an antiquarian interest in Etruscan daily objects, especially mirrors which with their incising which appealed to draughtsman and antiquarians alike. But Etruscan art really became historically visible in the last two centuries, especially the twentieth. The Apollo of Veii, in the words of the archaeologist Nigel Spivey “regenerated both scholarly and popular interest in Etruscan art.”[3]

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[1] Aldous Huxley, “After the Fireworks” in Brief Candles: Four Stories, orig. pub 1930, Chatto and Windus; repub Panther, 1977.

[2] Bernard Berenson, Aesthetics and History in the Visual Arts, (New York, 1948), 170-2.

[3] Nigel Spivey, Etruscan Art, Thames and Hudson, 1997, 66.