The clouds and the lightning. The Etruscans interpreters of the divine willExhibition at the National Archaeological Museum of Reggio Calabria
Reggio Calabria – The Greeks called them philotechnoi, lovers of the technique. And indeed the Etruscans excelled in the production of spectacular gold and bronze objects, votive or domestic.
For its part, this mysterious civilization which developed in central Italy from the Iron Age – through the contributions of different peoples – up to the Roman integration which took place between the 4th and 1st century BC, drew much from the Greeks and their myths, which reworked and reinterpreted according to the taste of the craftsmen, del pantheon Etruscan and local traditions.
The Etruscans landed in Magna Graecia thanks to an exhibition, protagonists of a fascinating dialogue with Greek civilization. Until the October 29th the house of the Riace Bronzes, the National Archaeological Museum of Reggio Calabria, hosts the beautiful exhibition entitled The clouds and the lightning. The Etruscans interpreters of the divine willborn from the collaboration with the Regional Directorate of Museums of Tuscany and with the National Archaeological Museum of Florence.
“I welcomed this project with enthusiasm – comments Stefano Casciu, regional director of the Tuscan Museums – which brings the extraordinary culture of the Etruscans to the heart of Magna Graecia. The collaboration agreement signed with the MArRC marks the start of a significant synergy, aimed at promoting and enhancing our country’s very rich archaeological heritage online”.
The clouds and the lightning. The Etruscans interpreters of the divine will, Exhibition at the National Archaeological Museum of Reggio Calabria
The itinerary, punctuated by over one hundred works arrived on the banks of the Strait from the National Archaeological Museum of Florence, embraces statues, objects in gold, silver and bronze, figurative ceramics, cinerary urns.
Curated by the director of the National Archaeological Museum of Reggio Calabria, Carmelo Malacrino, by the director of the National Archaeological Museum of Florence, Mario Iozzo, and by the curator of the Etruscan section of the same museum, Barbara Arbeid, the exhibition, as Iozzo points out, “aims to illustrate to the wider public the charm of the Etruscan civilization, seen through aspects of daily life, cults and funerary rituals”. Particular attention was paid to the religious practices of divination, highlighting the Etruscan habit of drawing omens from the flight of birds, from the entrails of animals and from the observation of the sky with its atmospheric phenomena.
“While we think lightning occurs because clouds collide, the Etruscans believe that clouds collide to send a divine message.” With these words, which give the exhibition its title, Seneca in the second book of Natural Questions it summarized the particularity of the Etruscan beliefs according to which the deities influenced human activities by sending signals that had to be decoded.
The clouds and the lightning. The Etruscans interpreters of the divine will, Exhibition at the National Archaeological Museum of Reggio Calabria
The two canopic jars – complex human-headed cinerary urns which, with their lively shapes tried to keep the memory of the image of the deceased – among the most beautiful pieces on display, seem to stare at us. The canopy of Cetona, from the necropolis of Cancelli, (600-575 BC) reproduces an impasto male figure on a throne. On the shoulder are four figurines of winged female divinities. The expressive bone eyes of the male Chiusi canopy seem to want to restore to the figure the physical integrity destroyed by the cremation ritual.
In the classical age, the arrival of ideas and cultural models from Greece led Etruscan craftsmen to imitate their forms. Terracotta vases become powerful means of spreading stories and myths. After getting to know the Greek vases, the Etruscans began to produce the same subjects in black and then red figures, with mythological scenes typical of their repertoire. If sagas of Greek origin prevail on the vases, scenes referring to the pantheon of Etruscan deities and local myths.
From the tomb of the Idrie di Meidias, a rich female burial in the necropolis of San Cerbone, in Populonia, comes the exceptional equipment that perhaps belonged to a deceased woman of priestly rank who returned a set of table utensils and two water bottles attics with scenes from the myths of Adonis and Phaone, linked to the goddess Aphrodite and her cults. From tomb I of Poggio dell’Impiccato, one of the richest deposits of the Villanovan period of Tarquinia, comes the sword with scabbard decorated with scenes of hunting wild boar and deer which bears witness to the close cultural ties between Etruria and southern Italy.
“The Etruscans – comments the curator Barbara Arbeid – honored the deceased in a different way. For example, the world in which they were honored in Tarquinia is different from the customs of Chiusi. Each city had its own peculiarities.
Another piece not to be missed is the so-called Senior Matera stone female cinerary statue from the Pedata necropolis of Chianciano Terme (450-440 BC).
The clouds and the lightning. The Etruscans interpreters of the divine will, Exhibition at the National Archaeological Museum of Reggio Calabria
The exhibition at the MArRC also includes a wide selection of terracottas, statuettes and bronze mirrors that bear witness to the variety (and diversity) of the Etruscan pantheon, such as the bronze statuette of Tinia (Etruscan Zeus), that of Menerva (Athena) or by Uni (Juno Sospita).
We thus discover that the Etruscans conceived of divinities as groups with specific skills. The individual figures were not distinct, but constituted sets of powers that operated jointly on one or more spheres (for example the world of the afterlife, the family, destiny). They had no human form or even a defined gender. Contacts with the Greeks helped to change the vision of the Etruscan pantheon who began to imagine their divinities in human forms and with characterizing attributes (such as the thunderbolt for Tinia, modeled on Zeus). However, some local deities continued to survive to which they joined daimonessupernatural forces, such as the Lase or Vanth, and without equivalent in Greece.
Along the way we find the myth of Ulysses and the Sirens enclosed in the alabaster urn of the 3rd century BC from the necropolis of Volterra. In the Etruscan imagination, the idea of the hero’s dangerous overseas journey symbolized death and the passage to the afterlife, which was imagined as a happy world, to be reached through the same vicissitudes that the hero had to face in the Strait of Scilla and Charybdis. They recalled the ancient journeys that the Greeks faced to reach the land of the Rasna (Etruscans) rich in grain, iron and precious minerals.
The clouds and the lightning. The Etruscans interpreters of the divine will, Exhibition at the National Archaeological Museum of Reggio Calabria
The exchanges between Etruria and the ancient Chalcidian colony of Rhegion instead emerge from the “Calcidian” ceramic production, the only black-figure vase production which, in the second half of the 6th century BC, can be considered worthy, throughout the Greek world, of being considered equal to the great figurative production of Athens.
The “Calcidian” vases, so called due to the Euboean alphabet in which the names of the characters depicted on them are written, today attributed to the craftsmen of Reggio, were influenced by Athenian, Corinthian, Greek-Oriental influences, but also by local elements, for be destined for export to the rich and lucrative markets of the Etruscan cities. They were decorated with mythological scenes derived from the epic of Stesichorus, Homer and Theagenes of Rhegion. The results of the return trades are instead the Etruscan buccheri found in Reggio and destined for the probable sanctuary of Artemis Phakelitis.
The exhibition also displays the bronze helmets of Vetulonia, of the Negau type, discovered in 1905 along the walls of the ark, crushed on purpose and piled up in a large pit, all dating back to the 5th century BC They would allude to the defeat of a family clan and the his militia by an adversary.
From the Greek sanctuaries, designed to be seen from all sides, we glide towards the Etruscan temple, accessible only from the front via a wide staircase, built near water sources and mountains. The votive offerings, of different types and materials, buried inside the sanctuary collected periodically and buried secretly, established contact between the faithful and the divinity. From the votive deposit of Brolio (Arezzo) come extraordinary evidence of offering rituals referable to the High Archaic age. In honor of a divinity, unknown to date, objects such as basins, cups and musical instruments were placed.
The exhibition dedicated to the Etruscans adds to the rich summer agenda of the MArRC.
“Alongside the programming of the Summer Nights on the terrace of the Museum – explains the director Carmelo Malacrino – this new exhibition will offer the possibility of an unprecedented journey into the world of the Etruscans. It is the first time that this theme has been presented south of Naples and we are happy with this opportunity made possible thanks to the Regional Directorate of Museums of Tuscany and the National Archaeological Museum of Florence.Visitors will have many temporary exhibitions at their disposal: the exhibition The Riace Bronzes. Fifty years of history e The Riace Bronzes. A journey through images, path For gods and for men. Music and dance in antiquity, the exposure On the apothecary shelf. Pharmacy jars in eighteenth-century Calabria, and the small section of the Deposits on display.