The Etruscans Made Astonishing Art. Why Aren't They Better Known?

0:00From a region called Volterra, you have these long elongated figures made of bronze. People look at them and they say Giacometti. Well, guess what? Giacometti was obsessed with Etruscan art.

0:21I'm Andrew Russeth, and this is The Art Angle, a podcast by Artnet News.

0:35The ancient Romans called the Mediterranean Mare Nostrum, R.C. But before their unrelenting rise, the Etruscans had built vast trade networks in the area, and they controlled much of the Italian peninsula, the future heart of the Roman Empire. Between around 900 BCE and the first century BCE, the Etruscans lived in the city-states in the region, developing art and making technological advances that are the subject of an astonishing show at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. The Etruscans, from the heart of ancient Italy, which runs through September 20th, tells the story of a people who were deeply religious, alive to life's great pleasures, and in dialogue with societies in distant lands.

1:21There are remarkable loans from more than two dozen institutions, including treasures that have never before been allowed to travel. Renee Dreyfus, the curator in charge of Ancient Art at the Fine Art Museums of San Francisco, organized this tour de force, and I recently had the pleasure of discussing it with her. Renee, thank you so much for coming on The Art Angle. Thank you, Andrew. I'm really delighted to be here. I had the pleasure of walking through the show a few weeks ago in San Francisco and and was just totally awed by the experience. I think, like a lot of people, I was not super familiar with the Etruscans.

1:57I knew the name, but as you write, they are considered mysterious, considered somewhat of the lost of the big three in the ancient world, among the Greeks and the Phoenicians. Why do we know so little about them today? First of all, they're not mysterious. Second of all, they're not lost. And third of all, you just gotta dig a little deeper. But we know so little about them. because very little of what they've written remains, either because of the climate, and they were writing on impermanent material, and books that they've written have decayed, but also because their language. What we do have of the Etruscan language, it's an isolate.

2:41It's a one-off language. In other words, it has no ancestors that we know and no descendants. so even a little bit of Etruscan literature that we do have is very hard to translate. Fascinating. It's totally fascinating. And my understanding is that you spent about a decade lobbying for and putting together this show. What was the passion coming from? Why did you want to do it? The idea for the show, I actually started thinking about it in the 1990s. Wow. But yes, the past decade in various forms, I have been working on this exhibition and networking with colleagues and friends and museum directors and curators to set the scene, to be able to secure objects for this exhibition that really tell the narrative about who the Etruscans were when they lived, why they're important, why we need to know about them for our own Western civilization.

3:48They are kind of a missing link. We know about the Greeks, we know about the Romans. However, there is that missing link in there of the Etruscans that we needed to present. And this exhibition does it. Yes, yes. And so to dive into the exhibition, something that stands out so remarkably, And this makes sense, given that their civilization spanned almost a millennia, from around 900 to 100. It's just immense diversity. You just see this incredible range of styles and techniques, remarkably sophisticated. If you were to introduce someone to the Etruscan civilization, how would you describe their artistic style and approach to making things?

4:33First, I would have to say that they settled primarily in Tuscany, and they spread out from there into Umbria and Lazio and further south and further east. And they created these very sophisticated and advanced city-states. These city-states became quite wealthy because of international trade on the Mediterranean. but there were different styles, techniques, and beliefs in all of these city-states, so that depending on when you're talking and where you're talking about the artistic style, they could be quite different. And that's extraordinary. I mean, their religious beliefs seem to be intact, but the way they express them will be somewhat different.

5:28For example, from a region called Volterra. You have these long, elongated figures made of bronze. These are amazing. People look at them and they say Giacometti. Well, guess what? Giacometti was obsessed with Etruscan art. He lived in Paris and he went to the Louvre. He saw their collection. Also in 1955, they had an exhibition there about the Etruscans, very early exhibition about the Etruscans, and he was mesmerized. And he actually even went to Volterra, where the style was, these long, elongated figures. So it's not that, oh, look, it looks like a Giacometti. You have to say, oh, Giacometti had seen this style from the Etruscans, and he was using it for his own work.

6:25It's absolutely amazing. And those elongated, attenuated figures, they were votive statues? Or how do we think they were used? Yeah, absolutely. So much of what we have left from the Etruscans outside of their tombs comes from sanctuaries and temples. And as I say, they were quite a religious group of people, and they believed in multiple gods. The worship of these gods was essential. Also, the gods would speak to them on an individual level. And you could even have diviners. There were diviners, those who could interpret what the gods are saying, that could tell you what might happen in the future.

7:13So deeply religious. Absolutely. The one remaining book that we have is a long length written on linen, beautiful linen, Etruscan linen. And it is the longest piece of textile that we have from the Etruscans, but also the longest inscription. And it is a ritual calendar. And the reason it exists today, and this is such a good story, is because it was found in Alexandria, Egypt, where the climate was dry and unchanging. Unlike Italy, where decay happened quickly to anything written on linen, this still exists. And its reuse is why we have it today. Someone brought this book from the Etruscan world to Alexandria, and they needed to know what they had to do to keep the gods happy each day.

8:22So this is a calendar. I should say it's a length of linen, but their books folded over and under and over and under and weren't cut the way our books are. So you can open it up and there's your calendar. It was a beautiful piece of linen. You don't want to just lose that piece of textile. Presumably the Etruscans were no longer in Alexandria. And someone cut the book into strips and then it was used to wrap an Egyptian mummy, a woman. And as happens in the 19th century, people who went to Egypt wanted to come home with souvenirs, and oftentimes they were mummies. And this mummy was bought, and it ended up in Zagreb, Croatia, where it's on view now in the Archaeological Museum.

9:17And we were just so incredibly fortunate to negotiate to be able to have this huge, very important work of art in the exhibition, the longest inscription and the longest piece of Etruscan textile. So really, when you think about it, this was the earliest European book. Incredible. When I saw it and I read the label in the exhibition, I sort of couldn't believe it. Is this an exhibition copy, I thought? Is this some sort of remarkable reproduction? No, it's the real thing. The history that has gone through that linen. I mean, I want to ask about all the incredible loans, but before getting there, I am curious also about other super signature characteristic productions or styles within the Etruscan kind of repertoire.

10:15I know there's the black ceramics and then the jewelry is astonishing as well. Will you talk us through those? Oh, yes. Yes. And the exhibition, of course, is just full of all of these gorgeous things that the Etruscans developed. And the black pottery that you're talking about, it's called Bukharoware. It is their signature pottery, and it was made by firing it in a kiln with the vents closed. So the smoke goes in and out and throughout the vessel, and it's black throughout. It's not glazed black, it's actual black. Deep, deep, yeah. Yeah, we have such a variety of shapes and sizes of the Bukura Ware.

11:04And it did spread throughout the Mediterranean. And wherever it turns up, it means that area was somehow connected to the ancient Dreskans, usually by trade. You'll find on it sometimes inscribed images. And there's an amphora in the exhibition, happens to belong to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and it's animals. And what I love about it is the Etruscans have taken Near Eastern, we say Western Asian imagery that they found, especially on the west coast of Turkey, where the Greeks had colonies. and these hybrid animals and unusual looking animals are incorporated into the Bukharovir in that case but you find them over and over again in Etruscan art very strange combinations like the chimera yes it's not in the exhibition but people know about that as a really strange hybrid animal.

12:16So yes, the Buccaro where all kinds of sizes, it was burnished or polished before it was fired. And sometimes, and we have a beautiful example from the Vatican Museum, in certain light, it looks silver. It reflects the way silver would. As far as the Etruscan jewelry is concerned, There's nothing like it. And even if people have no idea who the Etruscans were, they've seen perhaps 19th century copies of Etruscan jewelry. It contains the most beautiful and delicate filigree and granulation. It's unbelievable. It's not seen anywhere else in the world. So what is granulation? And granulation, in this case, is where wire is pulled to its thinnest possible dimensions and then sliced into tiny, tiny little segments.

13:25You apply heat to it and it creates this globe, a globular. In some cases for the Etruscans, it's almost microscopic. And then it was attached to the surface to give it even more spectacular kind of reflectivity. It's not the Etruscans invented the granulation technique, but they perfected it. They miniaturized it. They used it to great effect. And their jewelry just leaves you speechless. It's so amazing. and you're left saying, you know, without a microscope, without anything to enlarge, how do they do these things? It's just hard to say. I mean, it's got to be young eyes, I suppose. Right. Yeah, it's astonishing.

14:18You know, you just, you can't believe that it was done exactly by human hands. And I think what you're getting at one aspect of this in both examples, the ceramics and the jewelry, is when you walk through the exhibition, There is such a sense of cosmopolitanism, this sense the ancient world is alive and in touch with each other. Yes. And we're talking about the first millennium B.C. And there was the interconnectedness of the different cultures at that time. And people knew about each other. And they appreciated, they respected, and they really adored some of the imagery. I mean, we would maybe call it exotic, but for those wealthy Etruscans to have something that comes from elsewhere that they could have, it somehow was appreciated beyond belief.

15:15And these are the objects that you find in the elite tombs of the wealthy Etruscans. We have in the exhibition objects that come from a tomb known as the Regalini Galassi tomb. These are objects that are all in the Vatican Etruscan Museum. And what is important about this, besides the fact that it's filled with beautiful gold and silver gilt, bronze cauldrons a variety of bucquero everything you can imagine is that the tomb was owned by a woman yes thank you and this woman she could have been royalty don't know the tomb was found in Tervetri, which is ancient Kyrie. But this woman was wealthy, and you can tell that obviously she could take it with her, and she could inherit wealth.

16:20She could be an important member of society. In the exhibition, there's what they call an inkwell that also comes from the Vatican, from that tomb. And it has an Etruscan syllabary and the Etruscan alphabet around it. So we think she was able to read. She was literate. And there are objects in that tomb that come from elsewhere, especially Phoenician objects. Today's Lebanon, that's where the Phoenician traders came from. and there are things that were either heirlooms or perhaps they were given as diplomatic gifts that you see in her tomb showing that she was very special.

17:29So this was a society that had a real prominent place for women, at the same time very religious, very in touch with the surrounding world. And also Etruscans had a sort of reputation for lavishness even, I know, later on. Can you talk us through, yeah, what else do we learn from their objects and art, rightly or wrongly? What have we taken away? One of the things that I should say at this point, because we know the Greeks and we know the Romans, When the Greeks and the Romans were talking about the Etruscans, they didn't always do it in the best light. They were competitors for trade and the wealth of the Mediterranean.

18:11it. So sometimes they would say they had women who were loose because they could appear within society, the banquet, religious rituals. They were presented to society that way, whereas the Greeks and the Romans did not have women who were presented that way. So they thought of them as lascivious and quite different from their own society, so they looked askance at it. But if I could jump ahead a little bit, women in the Etruscan society could keep their maiden names. Interesting. Their names and then their family names, and they didn't have to change it to the names of their husbands. As time goes by, city-state by city-state, the Romans conquered the Etruscans, and the Etruscans then were absorbed into Roman society, and they became Roman citizens by the first century BC.

19:22At that point, Etruscan women were then taking their husbands' names. Wow. So just to move along as far as the women are concerned. But there are marvelous things in the exhibition like mirrors and a bronze box that held treasures that a woman would use for her, be like today's makeup and their little jewels and things like that. And these were found in the tombs as well. So we're learning more and more as we discover more and more tombs. But also why this exhibition is so important in this day and age is because There's more scholarship about the Etruscans and excavations, excavating sanctuaries as well as settlements.

20:21So learning a little bit more about everyday life and not just what was chosen to be included in the tomb. And, of course, why were these things in the tomb? because of their religious belief that the next world was going to be as good as this one, and they could take it with them. So they had elaborate ideas about what the next world was going to be like, what you had to bring with you, and how you were going to get there. And that seems to have been a major part of their beliefs. Incredible, incredible. I'm so glad you go to the Romans because something that comes across so clearly in the exhibition, and we should pause here and really plug the catalog.

21:12As you were saying, it's 25 authors. I mean, this scholarship is astonishing. You could teach, I think, multiple classes just with this catalog. It's such a rare thing for an exhibition to have something like this. And you point out that really what we think of as Rome and Roman, so much of it comes from the Etruscans, right? It's engineering techniques, it's viniculture. But talk us through that. I mean, what of Rome is really Etruscan? Okay, so the Etruscans, they had this dominant economy. What were they trading? They were trading agriculture, timber, metals. They had copper, they had tin, they had iron.

21:51They became wealthy as they were applying their trade throughout the Mediterranean. So they were a cultural force, especially in central Italy at the time. The Romans, even 10th century BC, were almost a little settlement. It was even an Etruscan settlement. It really took the Etruscans to teach them many things. Now, some things that the Etruscans knew very well and they passed on to the Romans include things like Roman numerals, which, I mean, that was Etruscan numerals. You know, I talked a little bit about the language and the language is unusual. The Etruscans learned how to write their unique language using Greek letters.

22:50And these were Greeks that settled in the Bay of Naples area because they overlapped with the Etruscans there. This is when Greeks was having Magna Gretia, the settlements in southern Italy that became major sources of wealth for the Greeks as they left the mainland. But the Etruscans didn't have their written language. And if you're going to be selling things throughout the Mediterranean, you really need to have a language, don't you? You have to keep track. You know, this is bookkeeping and accounting and also having things written in your own language that you know how to write and share with others.

23:35So the Greeks taught them the Eubian from that particular part of Greece, their alphabet. So we think, I mean, those who don't know about the Etruscans think that the Greeks taught the Romans the alphabet. And of course, then from the Romans to us, and we're using the same letters. Well, not so, because it was the Etruscans who taught the Romans after they had learned their writing system from the Greek. So you have things like that. This is really important for our own civilization as well. But they also taught religion, divination. The gladiatorial games, those were the original funerary games that the Etruscans had.

24:27This was a shock to me. As a classic guy who loves thinking about Rome, I did not know this. That the gladiators come from, okay, yeah, incredible. Yep, military practices. Even some Etruscan words that have to do with the military have passed on. So as you say, technology was important and hydraulics and engineering, those things. But remember, I mentioned that they settled in these very planned city-states. And so they passed on the idea of urban planning to the Romans. They knew how to drain the swamps. That became the forum in Rome. It's quite incredible. I mean, the list that you have, it just keeps going on and on.

25:14And you're like, whoa, okay. Did not know. I want to go back to religion and divination because you have this incredible object in the show. It also looks like it could be an earlier Giacometti, this abstract, little kind of amorphous object. And it's from the, I think, second century BC. It's a sheep's liver. Can you describe that for people? I have to say it's a bronze model of a sheep's liver. And it's from the city of Piacenza. Their museum has this work of art, and I think it is a work of art and also a religious object in their museum since 1877 when it was discovered right outside of Piacenza.

25:57never lent any other exhibitions, even in Italy. They would have a really nice reproduction made of bronze. And this was unique. I mean, timing is everything, and also nagging is everything. I mean, to have this is so extraordinary. People in the know say, how did you do this? Persistence. It's abstract because it represents a sheep's liver. A diviner would sacrifice a sheep, ask a question, reach inside the sacrifice sheep, pull out the liver, and they would look to see the deformities and the splotches and any markings on it. They could then tell whether or not a decision is a good decision.

26:55The important thing is the bronze liver is segmented, and in each of the segments is the name of one of the Etruscan gods. I see. So looking at the actual liver, comparing it against this crib sheet, they could tell which god was speaking to them and giving them advice. and it is the only really full-scale beautiful example of divination of this kind that we know about that has been discovered and it is a unique work and it is in the exhibition and in the catalog we have beautiful full-size photographs of all of the objects in the exhibition, and you can see this one to great advantage, you heard of Beware the Ides of March.

27:55So who told Julius Caesar that he needed to beware the Ides of March? An Etruscan diviner. Ah, I did not know that. Okay. Amazing. Amazing. So the art of divination, religious beliefs, sacrifices, offerings, the Romans learned so much about doing that from the Etruscans. I see. I see. You've mentioned a number of just thrilling loans. The oldest book in Europe from now Zagreb, this astonishing model of a sheep's liver. What was another one you were just so thrilled to get? Well, one thing I worked very hard to get is something from an area that is being excavated right now. And it's called San Cassiano de Bañe, Cassiano of the Baths.

28:49And these baths are thermal waters. And I wanted it in the last gallery where I talk about the Etruscans and the Romans. because what is found in the mud from these baths, from these mineral waters, sulfur waters, where people went to heal, you find these beautiful hollow cast statues. Some of them have Etruscan writing. These were offerings that were made to the gods and some of it have Latin. so you have latin and you have etruscan and you know that the romans and the etruscans are going to the same healing sanctuary to make offerings to the gods to ask for good health or perhaps fertility or to thank the gods because all of a sudden they're better but a very important discovery that no one knew existed until just a few years ago.

30:05Incredible. Incredible. And you've mentioned it a little bit and alluded to it, but what other kinds of things have scholars been learning about in recent years as these excavations have been done, as further research has been done about objects in collections? What's the tenor of the discussion around the Etruscans? Well, I think this is where scholarship is just taking off. We know so much more just through looking at the settlements where you can even see workshops. workshops. I think this is important to see how people lived, not just how they died and what they brought with them, but how they lived, how they created some of these works of art, and learning more about daily life and who the artists were and what the temples looked like and how they were used.

30:56I mean, this is the new discoveries that are happening right now that is very, very exciting. And it's opening up a new realm for scholars. There are more university courses about the Etruscans now. Museums around the world, we borrowed from the Louvre, we borrowed from the British Museum. You know, they have new galleries that are just set up for the Etruscans. This just didn't happen before. The Villa Giulia in Rome, which is the largest Etruscan museum in the world, is refurbishing their collections, what's on view, and they're adding magnificent works that have never been seen before. So I think this is really an awakening period about the Etruscans.

31:56And we don't want to say that they were conquered by the Romans who took over each city state. They were not erased. Right. History is there for us to look at and we have to find it and put together this enduring history that significantly influenced our own culture and civilization. I love this. So really, the history of that part of the world, nuances being added, rewritten in some sense to kind of include them properly. Yeah, I almost could say that this is the Etruscan year with this exhibition and other scholarly books that have been written and articles that are being written. The Etruscans are taking central stage like never before.

32:46Yes, yes. On that note, Ben, amid all of this scholarship, which comes so clearly into focus in the exhibition and the catalog, I'm curious what you still just are so desperate to know. What would you love to know about their way of life or the way that they made art or how they lived? Anything. What's an impressive thing for you? I'm going to go off on a tangent and say I only wish for archaeologists to be able to find more written documents. Yes. With more written documents, the scholars will be able to translate the Etruscan language more fully. I mean, they're making headway all the time, but they need longer inscriptions, not just short inscriptions that are found on offerings for the gods, but something substantial like the Zagreb linen book that will give us a better clue.

33:55And maybe even the Rosetta Stone of the Etruscan. Yes, yes. Something that will help to understand their language, which will give us a better understanding of who they were. And written by the Etruscans, not by the Greeks and the Romans who were not telling the story. But we need to know more about the Etruscans from their own written documents. Absolutely. We can all cross our fingers then, listening. A hopeful note to end on that perhaps in future years we will have that and will lead to more scholarship. But as it is, just a fantastic show. Such a thrill to talk with you. And thank you for taking the time.

34:37I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. This was fun. I enjoyed it. Thank you. The Art Angle is produced by Sonia Manalili with contributions from Ben Davis and Caroline Goldstein. Thanks for listening and see you next week.