Etruscan Art

Tuscany Region, Italy7th – 6th Centuries BCE

Etruscan Key Ideas

• Area of modern day Tuscany (named for the Etruscans)

• Sophisticated society before the Romans• Influenced by Archaic Greek Art• Bronze and terra cotta masters• Complex necropoli tell us about them• Etruscan culture absorbed by the Romans

Etruscan PaintingTomb of the Leopards, c. 480-470 BCE, Tarquinia, Italy

• Paintings are in tombs, which look like domestic dwellings

• May have been influenced by Greek painting

• Couples lounge at a banquet (it was unheard of for women to lounge next to their husbands in public)

• Men painted darker than women

• Celebratory emotions (perhaps a funeral banquet)

• Leopards at top• CHECKERBOARD ceiling

Etruscan Sculpture Terra-cotta, bronze and stucco preferred media; modeled terra-cotta (not carved); look similar to archaic Greek sculpture, but with dynamic movement; lack of nudity; stylized hair

Apollo from Veii, c.510 BCE, terra-cotta, now in Rome

Sarcophagus from Cerviteri, c.520, terra-cotta, now in Rome

Bronze Sculpture

Capitoline Wolf, c. 500 BCE, bronze, now in Rome

• Very famous sculpture, copies are all over Rome and Tuscany

• Face does not look wolf-like

• Alert, snarling, protective

• Story of Romulus and Remus suckling from she-wolf (children added during the renaissance)