Etruscan art
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The head of a bronze statue of an Etruscan warrior, from about 300 BC. The Etruscans lived in Etruria, central Italy from the 8th to the 4th centuries BC. Although eventually dominated by the Romans, they enjoyed great power in the 6th century BC.
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A bronze statuette of an Etruscan warrior, from about 500 BC. Etruscan art, which included painting, pottery, metalwork, and jewellery as well as sculpture, had a great influence on the development of later Western art.
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Dating from the 6th century BC, these Etruscan tombs are in Tarquinia, Italy. The Etruscans (an ancient people of central Italy) made finely carved terracotta coffins, and their tombs are often decorated with brightly coloured frescoes of scenes of everyday life. This example, however, portrays a funerary banquet.
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Dancers and a harpist on an Etruscan fresco from Tarquinia, Italy. This fresco was found on the wall of a tomb and dates from c. 465 BC. Tarquinia was a principal city of the Etruscan people, who inhabited parts of modern day Tuscany and Umbria from the 8th to the 2nd centuries BC.
The art of the inhabitants of Etruria, central Italy, a civilization that flourished 8th–2nd centuries BC. The Etruscans produced sculpture, painting, pottery, metalwork, and jewellery. Etruscan terracotta coffins (sarcophagi), carved with reliefs and topped with portraits of the dead reclining on one elbow, were to influence the later Romans and early Christians.
Painting
Most examples of Etruscan painting come from excavated tombs, whose frescoes depict scenes of everyday life, mythology, and mortuary rites, typically in bright colours and a vigorous, animated style. Scenes of feasting, dancing, swimming, fishing, and playing evoke a confident people who enjoyed life to the full, and who even in death depicted themselves in a joyous and festive manner. The decline of their civilization, in the shadow of Rome's expansion, is reflected in their later art, which loses its original joie de vivre and becomes sombre.Influences
Influences from archaic Greece and the Middle East are evident, as are those from the preceding Iron Age Villanovan culture, but the full flowering of Etruscan art represents a unique synthesis of existing traditions and artistic innovation, which was to have a profound influence on the development of Western art.Grave goodsThe cemeteries of Etruria were recorded by George Dennis in his 19th-century work Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria. Tombs cut out of rock yielded many thousands of imported black- and red-figured Athenian pots, which formed the basis of many European museum collections of vases. Wedgwood admired Etruscan pottery, and named his ceramic works in the English Potteries Etruria. |
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