Etruscan Art

0:00 the Etruscans were a culture that lived in the Italian peninsula and dominated the culture there in the eighth seventh and sixth centuries the Etruscans predated that the Romans in terms of their rule of the Italian peninsula and this is a culture that was very powerful due to their mining they mined ten iron copper and silver and by the seventh century there was this sort of wealth boom because of all of this minding and mining an increased demand for arts and objects so we see this sort of explosion of the creation of art objects at this

0:46 time the Etruscans controlled the city of Rome itself so Rome was under Etruscan rule for some time under initially a king named Tarquinius priestess he was the first Etruscan king of Rome and then his son and then later grandson ruled his grandson Tarquinius Superbus and his sister Thalia killed their spouses so they could consolidate their power and then they killed their father and they took over Rome this was a brutal brutal murder of their father very famously - Lea ran over her father in the streets of Rome with a with a

1:32 chariot splattering blood everywhere is the story this is a lovely way to get our talk about the Etruscans started and then her brother Arthur keenya Superbus was driven out of Rome in 509 BC and the Romans installed the Roman Republic and that's we will say for another chapter the Etruscans existed at the same time as the Greek Archaic classical and Hellenistic periods and we're going to see a lot of similarity between the two cultures but we will also see some significant differences the etruscans at this point

2:18 in history were more powerful than the Greek city-states and wealthier than the Greek city-states this object a fibula which is basically a brooch or a pen with its orientalizing liens and remember orient means Eastern so basically we're saying Mesopotamian style liens and if you look at these liens here you can see the influence of Babylon which would have been a prominent culture at this time these are very similar to the liens we saw on the Ishtar gates so these Mediterranean cultures and these Near Eastern cultures are in close proximity to each other and communicating and exchanging ideas and exchanging goods and so we see that

3:06 influence here this is made using a technique called rep Jose which is the hammering of metal which is something that we saw in the might in Mycenaean art with the mask of Agamemnon but here we also see another technique that we haven't studied before called granulation and granulation is a kind of soldering really where you take beads of a metal and drop it onto the surface of a metal object creating these raised areas and so that's how the these figures were made but the high quality of the craftsmanship and the materials tell us that this was a wealthy and powerful culture at least at this time Etruscan culture was very similar to

3:54 Greek culture in many many ways religiously especially the Greek gods and Etruscan gods are very similar they have slightly different names but their their religious practices and beliefs were very similar however there are significant differences in their temples as well as similarities this is a typical Etruscan temple and you can see I think the Greek influence we have the pitched roof we have a pet we have what appear to be Doric style columns however this is not a peripheral or a peristyle structure meaning there is not a colonnade surrounding the building as we would have seen in Greek

4:40 structures also Etruscan structures often sat on a platform that you're not seeing here that Greek temples did not and I don't mean just this simple stylobate here the columns themselves are actually what we call a Tuscan column Tuscany of course is a place in Italy now and it is what used to be a true iya or the the Etruscan realm so Etruscan Tuscany you can see how the names sort of morphed into each other my apologies so this is actually called the Tuscan style these are columns are made with wood as opposed to the Greek Doric columns which would have been made with marble in fact the materials built of

5:26 this are primarily wood this entire temple are primarily wood and terracotta so that is a significant difference between Greek and Etruscan art are the materials ma Greeks were using marble by the archaic period the Etruscans we're still using wood and terracotta which is a form of clay which the Greeks would have used earlier also you'll notice that there is no relief sculpture in any met appease or triglyphs because there are no meta peace between the triglyphs because er no triglyphs there are no freezes whatsoever on these Etruscan temples and so instead the statuary was placed on top so we would have images of

6:12 the gods kind of perched on the roof oh these buildings my apologies I had to record this twice because I forgot to hit record on the microphone the first time I did this this is a typical Etruscan sculpture you can see the similarities with the Greeks archaic sculpture they both have those archaic faces with the bulging eyes that archaic smile they also there is also a similarity in the anatomy both the Greeks and the Etruscans were close observers of human anatomy but there are some key differences so first of all the material their Greek sculpture is a marble sculpture and the Etruscan is

6:59 terracotta so this low-fired clay also the position of the bodies are very different on the Greek sculpture in the archaic period we still see this strong Egyptian influence with the left foot sticking straight out in the body rigid with the arms at the side and this bilateral symmetry so it's basically the same on either side except for that left foot sticking out the Etruscans had a very different approach to the human form they wanted their bodies to move and so there's a liveliness in a life like quality and naturalism if you will to the Etruscan sculpture this statue leans forward as one does we're walking

7:46 right this is how people move we lean forward so goddess has sort of rigid weird Egyptian hokey-pokey and instead we see a real sort of thrust forward with the Etruscan sculpture we also see the addition of a vase at the bottom to support the sculpture much like in the marble copies of Greek originals that we have have studied before otherwise there's very similarities in the hairstyle also a huge difference the Etruscan sculpture is clothed as was the norm for most cultures in this area at the time with the exceptions of the Greeks because the Greeks loved that human body Etruscans also had different

8:35 burial practices than the Greeks Etruscans often buried their dead in very elaborate tombs whereas Greeks never really did this this is more in something more in common with Egyptian culture so even though the Etruscans had similar religious beliefs to the Greeks and similar gods and other were similar religious practices or burial practices were very different the wealthy Etruscans buried their dead and these two mewling these large tombs that are very similar to a tholos from Mycenaean culture those beehive tombs that we studied with the key difference that these are sort of sitting above these

9:22 aren't covered in dirt or at least not the entire structures are covered in dirt and you can clearly see the sides of the buildings here these are large these are 130 foot feet or so in diameter and 50 feet tall so you're looking at large structures inside let's see what we find well this is a sarcophagus a structure that holds a coffin we've seen sarcophagi dating all the way back to ancient Egypt and the before this you see an Etruscan couple lounging having dinner this would have been a common sight for dinner

10:08 and Etruscan homes where you lounged while you ate you would have people over you would talk and you would conversate this is what is happening here you can see the motion of the woman's hands and the man's hands as if they are engaged in conversation you can see those archaic faces but in many ways there is a liveliness and a casualness to the bodies that the Greeks would have never really embraced especially in this archaic period where sculptures tend to look rather stiff one of the key differences though is the way the female form is treated actually not the female form but the way though the the woman is treated here socially Greeks would have

10:55 never allowed this kind of thing to happen Greek men and women often lived very separate in segregated lives women weren't given a lot of power and ancient Greek culture it was a very much a male-dominated society and the Greeks were horrified by the way Etruscan women had a certain amount of power now certainly we're not looking at he appear equality here but like in Egypt we often see women alongside men and conversing with men in a way that would not have been allowed in Greek society and Etruscans were sort of notorious in Greek eyes for the vocality of their women and letting and how women spoke

11:43 their minds in the Etruscan culture and this kind of goes back to my story about the daughter of the king who kills him in this horrific way but it sort of shows the boldness of Etruscan women now not all Etruscan woman's were committing patricide so you know wiped that from your mind but certainly there is a different social dynamic the Greek theater pompous talks about how horrified he was though by the way Etruscan man just allowed their women to express opinions and talk to people freely and how they could go to dinner with their men and how they could attend sporting events and even how wives were honored along with husbands when

12:30 children were given awards so like if a soldier was rewarded for his bravery and both of his parents would be mentioned in that honorary and that honoring of the soldier okay so that's that's good for that so let's look inside the rest of some of these tombs the there's a volcanic rock and that's prevalent through large parts of Italy called tufa tu FA and that is what makes up the rock here it's also what we're going to find under the surface of Rome tufa is fairly easy to carve and so these tombs of these elite Etruscans who were very

13:15 wealthy in power because of metal mining and we're quite elaborate but whereas the like their Egyptian counterparts the Etruscans believe the afterlife is very similar to this life and you had to prepare for it and you had to pack for it the Egyptians treated their tombs in many ways sort of like storerooms where you would kind of store your goods and then you could use that stuff later in the afterlife but the Etruscan tombs at least for the very wealthy were like homes they were decorated they had furniture they had beds they had kitchens they had all the kinds of things you would want in a home and many of these the furniture and the decorations were made from either carving the tufa or made by adding

14:03 terracotta wet clay and then letting it dry to the surface you can see by the plan on the right that this is laid out just like a home that we have a sort of a living room with chairs we have bedrooms with bad so this is home sweet home for the dead interior another interior this is from the called the tomb of the reliefs this is these are from a place called turbot airy in Italy this is about I don't know 4050 miles or so from Rome here you can see that the domestic world is displayed with a lot of detail in this image we

14:49 see carvings and terracotta additions of all sorts of kinds of stuff you would find enough home cooking implements pitchers a tools those sorts of things we also evenly see a little house cat down here over back here against a bench and I have a blow-up here for you is an image of the god of the dog the mythical dog Cerberus who is the three-headed dog you might remember this from Harry Potter who guarded who guards the gates of the afterlife so once again an allusion to a religious belief that is common in both Greek and Etruscan belief this is

15:36 from the interior of the this is from the tomb of the Leopards this is a fresco frescoes we have seen in this area dating all the way back to the ancient Minoans the Greek Archaic the Greeks in the archaic period would not have had these kinds of frescoes though so this is an example where the Etruscans had a technology and an artistic ability that the Greeks didn't have at this time the Greeks didn't have the resources or to know how to do something like this in the archaic they would soon surpass their their Etruscan neighbors but this you would you wouldn't see this kind of decoration in this period in ancient Greece this is

16:22 called the tomb of the Leopards because of this pediment area which depicts two leopards in this Herald expanse that we have seen dating all the way back thousands of years at this point to the ancient Mesopotamians but once again look at sort of the liveliness of the figures here you'll notice also that we see men and women men portrayed with dark-skinned women with light skin so this is a artistic device that we have seen dating all the way back to the ancient Minoan so you know at this point this is a eight hundred nine hundred year plus year technique we can see and once again there's that liveliness the figures are gesturing and sort of really talking with their hands here if we look

17:09 at this particular fresco from Turkey Nia this is from the tomb of the auger you'll notice there's two guys standing on either side of the door two attendants with their hands and what would have been seen as a common greeting with their heads on there their hands on their heads if we look to the right we can see two wrestlers nude wrestling just like the Greek athletes perform so the Etruscans so we have kind of a sporting events all along this particular wall with the exception in the far left we see this is an image of the dead this is an augur this is a

17:56 priest we can tell by his curved staff and down here we see a person wearing black this is a mourner who's mourning the death of this guy here on the far right of this image we see something rather disturbing we see a guard with a man who is bound in by ropes whose head is covered with a cloth who is being mauled by a dog this was part of a bloodsport the the Etruscans like later on the Romans do love to witness gladiatorial combat they love to see men fight animals men fight each other to the point that blood was drawn and that is what you were seeing here this man is having to fight this animal he has a club but he's also can't

18:41 see the animal so it is rather horrific barbaric image and then once again here's some more here's some here are some more frescoes once again of men and women side by side which was something we would have never seen in Greek culture at all but there's that sort of liveliness I I also hope you noticed that some of the motifs the waves down here the the pigmentation the coloring is very similar to Minoan art even though Minoan art Minoan culture is you know thousand years passed at this point so there are some similarities though the Etruscans would have been familiar

19:26 with some of the minoan ruins at this point and would have you know maybe utilized some of the the styles that they saw there there's an interest in nature in a lot of Etruscan art and images of flora and fauna birds and man are animals and plants I should say and once again those brightly colored imagery Etruscans we're not only master sculptors when it came to using terracotta but also with metalworking and in fact they were quite advanced in terms of their metal smithing and metalworking and that rivaled the Greeks at this point this is a sculpture from depicting the founding

20:13 of Rome the mythological founding of Rome this is a creature known as the Capitoline wolf named after the Capitoline Hill in Rome underneath are Romulus and Remus the mythological founders of Rome two boys who were abandoned and then left on the hill to be raised by this wolf these sculptures of the babies here would not have been originally there so I'm going to block them out because these those were added a long time later 2,000 years later during the Italian Renaissance so we'll erase those and we'll just focus on the wolf the story is Romulus and Remus were

21:00 raised by this wolf Romulus kills Remus and becomes the first leader of Rome this wolf is beautiful I think this is one of my favorite sculptures from this entire course here we can see the Etruscan and their their mastery of the lost wax technique which the Greeks also utilized but I think also we see a sense of liveliness a sense of sort of emotion a a kind of spark if you will that we don't necessarily see in Greek art especially at this period where we're looking at sort of the very very late archaic the Greeks just didn't put this kind of emotion in their work they didn't put

21:47 this for realism or ver ISM ve R is M which means truthfulness in their work and it's sort of a weird combination of realism and abstraction or stylization to stylize something means to sort of make it unreal stick to make it look more decorative and so what we're seeing here is this this capital line wolf we can see there's a lot of detail paid and attention to her ribs into the fact that she's nursing and that she's a mom this incredibly realistic face I don't know if you've ever seen a dog or a wolves face of course you have dogs and wolves there are these wolves are these four-legged animals and at least dogs

22:33 are everywhere maybe you've seen one I'm sure hope you have here's one and if you look at its face it's like the the artist has spent a long time looking at dogs and capturing their emotion capturing their facial expressions capturing the way they pant the way the corners of their mouths sort of round and turn downwards it's exquisite exquisite observation and craftsmanship but then there's other places where reality has kind of been thrown out the window and we see this very stylized fur around its haunches and around its neck that is not realistic at all and it's not because the artist couldn't obviously make realistic realistic looking image but because they wanted

23:19 this style of the kind of style ization there because they liked it but there's a sense of urgency there's a sense of desperation almost in this dog's face that I think it's just absolutely exquisite and like nothing we would ever see at least in this period in Greek archaic art if we look at another bronze sculpture this is from the Classical period so we're dealing with something that's a little more realistic but we still see some of that stylization this is a chimera chimeras were the from Greek mythology there are these creatures that are made up of lions and snakes and serpents and goats and there are these fierce beasts that are kind of

24:06 represent sort of this unnatural coming together of these animals and so once again we have that close observation we have this incredible bronze work once again lost-wax Tecna we see the musculature of the lion underneath the way it leans forward and kind of braces itself with its haunches we see these wrinkles and it snows it would have had originally eyes and teeth made either from ivory or perhaps seashell or maybe some other material perhaps wood we don't really know it's it's long it's long gone so you know it wouldn't have looked hollow like it does now but then we see that stylisation with the fur around its mane and along

24:53 its back this is an object called a sister this these are commonly found in Etruscan tombs of the wealthy which once again refers to sort of the the wealth and power that these Etruscans had this is these sisters held women's toiletries and so you know combs and makeup and things like that here at the top we see three figures you can clearly see that the Greek contrapposto technique so once again this is showing us that there is contact between the cult cultures we have the

25:38 artist has car carve and their name sewn ovios Plautius is the artist here and we also know that it was a gift from my woman named then the MAL Konya to her daughter so if you look at the detail sort of the incising hear the scraping into the metal this is really quite an exquisite object this was made from a solid sheet of metal of bronze and then turned into a cylinder kind of rolled the Etruscans in some of their architecture utilized the arch this is a [Music] architectural element we will see a lot in Rome and the was established by the

26:27 Etruscans this is from a wall guarding a sea called Perugia this city Etruscan cities were eventually taken over by the Romans and taken into the Roman Empire and most of the Etruscan cities were seriously damaged in the process of the Romans conquering the Etruscans but Perugia made a deal with Rome and so some of their buildings survived and the walls around their cities survived those who will be talking about them arch more in more detail later on this is sort of at the end of the Etruscan era this is and

27:15 the you're looking at a Hellenistic sculpture and so like Greek Hellenistic sculpture you're looking at emotion you're looking at images of sorrow which was a not uncommon in a theme of Greek Hellenistic art so we're seeing something very similar this is another sarcophagus but gone is the animated and I'm almost you know happy looking couple instead we see this despondent sad man Lars pou Lena staring out sort of into space if you look at the bottom of the sarcophagus you can see this rather

28:01 gruesome view of death we see these two figures called char ins these demon-like figures with their heavy hammers as they go to torture and pulverize this figure here who I assume is Laura's Pugh Lena and then on either side we see what are known as vaults which are also demons but female demons from the Etruscan view of the afterlife so we certainly see a those Hellenistic tendencies which we saw in Greek art emotion oftentimes negative emotions playing out here on these sarcophagus lids give us a good idea of Etruscan life was like and once again we

28:47 see that Etruscan realism or ver ISM in this image of this couple a lot of care has been taken to show their sort of love for each other we see a kind of interaction a romantic interaction here that we don't see in Greek art and there's something very sort of sweet about the way this couple embraces each other in death and then you also see there's a very fine detail in portraying the sheets over their bodies this is stone and yet we see the outline of their bodies underneath the sheet as if it is made of linen or some other sort of cloth we're going to round this out with an image of a magistrate a guy

29:35 named Elaine Mattel a he is a a civic leader by this time the Etruscans were fully conquered by the Romans and their style of dress their style of clothing are their so they're their hairstyles were very Roman in nature in fact this statue looks very Roman we'll see a lot of statues of orators like this with their hand up in the air addressing their people like the other statues bronze statues we have seen he is missing the inlays of his eyes but we see that that realism here that we have seen throughout Etruscan art and and

30:22 that that wraps up our chapter on the Etruscans and so we're going to move on now to to Rome so we'll see you there