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Engraved with two nude male figures, the figure on the right standing wearing a helmet and mantle, leaning on a shield with his left hand and holding a spear in his right hand, and the figure on the left, a satyr wearing a fillet tied around his head, leaning on a thyrsus in his right hand and holding a bone in his left hand, with foliate decoration on either side and below,
Etruscan gold ring, 4th–3rd century B.C.
Etruscan, 3rd century B.C. (Hellenistic period)
The reclining woman represented on the lid wears a heavy torque necklace and holds a fan in her right hand. The frieze depicts two pairs of Greeks fighting Amazons, while the Etruscan death demon Vanth stands at the right. The Amazonomachy is well known from Greek art, especially from the fourth century on, and also appears on other Etruscan works in this gallery. The inclusion of the Vanth is a characteristic Etruscan addition to the representation. Vestiges of paint survive in the eyes, shields, and belts.
From the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Sarcophagus and lid with husband and wife, Etruscan, 350–300 B.C. Made of marble, found Vulci, Lazio, Italy.
The top of the cover takes the form of a bed with pillows, and a man and his wife embrace under a large sheet. She wears a complex earring and he a bracelet of twisted strands. There is no costume visible. On the long side below the man is a frieze with four pairs of Greeks and Amazons in combat. A bead-and-reel molding appears above, and simple pilasters frame the scenes on the corners. The other side, the long panel below the woman, has only a plain fillet molding above, suggesting it was the back of the sarcophagus proper. The frieze features two pairs of horsemen and foot soldiers in combat, with a warrior in fighting pose on foot in the center. On the left end (facing the frieze with Greeks and Amazons), two lions bring down a bull. The bead-and-reel molding is seen above. On the right end, two griffins are tearing into a fallen horse.
The sarcophagus is inscribed for Thanchvil Tarnai and her husband Larth Tetnies, son of Arnth Tetnies and Ramtha Vishnai. (MFA)
Courtesy & currently located at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Photo taken by Sebastià Giralt.
Ancient Etruscan Mirror with Female Figure and Engraved Scene, bronze, 3rd century BC.
The handle of this mirror is cast as a female figure with bracelets, armband, and necklace. She holds an object in her right hand, her arm is bent, and her outstretched wings curve around the mirror. There is an engraved scene on the reverse of the mirror, depicting a warrior and a woman standing before a building, with a man and woman at the sides.
Courtesy & currently located at the Walters Art Museum, USA.
Gold finger-ring, decorated in high relief with a youth with a jug and phiale.
500-475 BC
Etruscan(?)/Italtic(?)
(Source: The British Museum)
The Ancient Etruscan Liver of Piacenza, found in 1877 near Gossolengo, Italy. This bronze artifact is a life-sized model of a sheep’s liver, and is believed to be a tool for priests practicing haruspicy (a form of divination which involves inspecting the entrails of sacrificed animals). It is thought to date to the 2nd-3rd centuries BC, and is covered in writing of the names of Etruscan deities.
Courtesy & currently located at the Municipal Museum of Piacenza, in the Palazzo Farnese, Italy. Photo taken by Lokilech.
Aphrodite rescuing her son Aeneas wounded in fight, scene from The Iliad. Shoulder of an Etruscan black-figure amphora, ca. 480 BC.
Courtesy & currently located at the Staatliche Antikensammlungen, Munich, Germany. Photo taken by Bibi Saint-Pol.
The first ever Etruscan pyramids have been located underneath a wine cellar in the city of Orvieto in central Italy, according to a team of U.S. and Italian archaeologists.
Villanovan period
Italy
9th Century BC
The Villanovan culture was the earliest Iron Age culture of central and northern Italy, abruptly following the Bronze Age Terramare culture and giving way in the 7th century BC to an increasingly orientalizing culture influenced by Greek traders, which was followed without a severe break by the Etruscan civilization. The Villanovan culture and people branched from the Urnfield culture of Eastern Europe. The Villanovans introduced iron-working to the Italian peninsula; they practiced cremation and buried the ashes of their dead in pottery urns of distinctive double-cone shape.
The Etruscans
The Etruscans were an early Italian peoples. They begin to emerge in the 8th century BC and have their heyday in the 7th and 6th centuries. Their’s was an urban civilisation; while the rest of Italy were living in villages, the Etruscans alone had towns. These had enclosing walls, gates and temples built of stone.
They consisted of a confederation of “city-states” with magistrates. Materially and technologically they were advanced compared to their neighbours in the rest of Italy. They practiced draining and irrigation. They built shaft and tunnels to access metal ore deposits.
Etruscan religion was one of books, sacred books of prophets- the chief of whom was Tages. He laid down the rules concerning ritual and prescribing the life of states and men, the interpretation of the weather, the art of reading entrails and the knowledge of conducting dead men safely to the afterlife. Their religion was highly ritualised. One of object, the famous bronze liver of Piacenza, seems to be a reference guide to reading the liver’s of sacrificed beasts with different bits referring to different gods.
They under a Triad of gods; Tinia (Jupiter), Uni (Juno) and Menrva (Minerva), they developed a pantheon of gods similar to the Greeks. These included Voltumna/Vertummus (the first of the gods of Etruria according to Varro), Turan (Aphrodite), Fufluns (Dionysos), Turms (Hermes), Sethlans (Hephaestus), Hercle (Herakles), Maris (Ares) and Nethuns (Neptune).
They believed in an afterlife. On one hand there was a beautiful paradise full of coolness, music and banquets, on the other their was a “hell” full of melancholy, grief, torture and suffering. In this hell ruled two monstrous spirits- Charun (Charon) and Tuchulcha (Hades). These two gods were appeased by the blood of combatants (perhaps a precursor to Roman gladiatorial contests).
Their art was much influenced by Hellenism, like their religion. They produced sculptures (in the round, bas relief, statuettes, tripods, and sarcophagi). They developed a skill for modelling in clay and firing large scale works, particularly of note are large terra cotta sarcophagi depicting the decased. They painted their tombs with frescos, most notably at Terquinii. These survive today and are incredibly important as they are a reflection of “the great archaic painting, lost in Greece”.
It was the Etruscan civilisation, along with the Greeks that influenced an early Rome. During the 4th to the 1st century BC they gradually yielded to Rome’s growing power.
