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Italian Art Trip to Cerveteri-Tarquinia, Italy
North of Rome along the seacoast, Cerveteri and Tarquinia preserve striking remains of Etruscan civilization, which flourished in central Italy from the eighth-century B.C. until subsumed under Rome by the first-century B.C. Like ancient Egypt , Etruria was a culture elaborately involved in the burial of its dead, so that thousands of Etruscan tombs have been discovered in the rocky countryside of the region. These underground chambers, some marked by great grassy mounds ( tumuli ) above, resemble “homes” for the deceased. The artifacts discovered within -- sculpted coffins, ceramic vessels, gold ornaments -- have been removed to museums, but fortunately, their interior art remains largely intact.
At the necropolis of Cerveteri, you can descend into the earthen mounds and get a sense of the architecture and stone carvings of the tombs. The landscape is ancient and rugged, its streets indented still with the grooves of funeral carts that pulled the dead. At Tarquinia, the vogue was for decorating the tombs with wall paintings, and the frescoes are among the earliest to survive in Italy . But they are “ancient” in chronology only, for the vitality of scenes of Etruscan banquets, gaming, hunting and sexual acts will bring alive before your eyes this culture known to us only through the remnants of its dead.
Tomb of the Augurs, Tarquinia
One of the best-preserved among the tombs at Tarquinia is the so-called Tomb of the Augurs, painted around the year 510 B.C. It is a single chamber tomb, with paintings decorating its four walls in a continuous scene. Opposite the actual entrance, the traveler will see a painted door flanked by two robed figures. These two are professional mourners, who enact their grief with stylized gestures of the arms. The fictive door is probably meant as an allusion to the actual door of the tomb, so that the scenes painted on the other walls represent as if our world outside the tomb. As such, they provide clues as to rituals that surrounded death centuries ago in Etruria -- rituals far removed from our own practices of mourning.
On the right wall, two nude men grapple in a wrestling match. The figure to the left who holds a curved staff was once thought to be an augur (one who divines the future), but more probably, he is simply an umpire. The three vessels that stand stacked between the wrestlers are prizes to be awarded the victor. Funeral games were staged for the deaths of heroes in Homer's Iliad , and other ancient literature tells us this was indeed a widespread custom. It may seem irreverent to us, but its function, according to anthropologists, was to anoint a strong successor after the death of a “big man” in society. Nor were the games always so benevolent: further to the right along the wall, a masked man incites a dog to rip into an unfortunate fellow hindered both by a sack over his head and ropes entangling his limbs.
The paintings are bold in style, executed with a limited color palette dominated by black, reds and yellows. There is no shading, but instead broad, rhythmical outlines set the scenes into motion. Most likely, Etruscan artists were inspired by examples of contemporary Greek vase painting. The vessels themselves were often included among the prized objects buried with the dead in the tombs. But because Greek wall paintings were only executed above ground, absolutely no traces have survived. The Etruscan tomb paintings, then, offer a precious glimpse at painting in pre-Roman Italy.
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