Etruscan Art - Notes

Chapter 12 Literary Aspects of Archaic Art
[Note: References to plates are included in the text. The plates are not included in this computer document.

I N D E X

The Emergence of Literary Subjects
Mythical Themes in Greek Art
Religion and Myth in Etruria

Myth and its Uses
The Chariot from Monteleone

T E X T
The Emergence of Literary Subjects
Mythical Themes in Greek Art. In Greece poetry preceded every other art. Literature, that is poetic fiction, shaped the concepts in which men learned to recognize themselves as existing in particular social and personal conditions, over and above the great generalities of life and death. For fiction, if not true to fact, can yet be true to experience. Story-telling can dwell on individual happenings and impart significance to the seemingly accidental. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the Greek mind was first awakened to itself and the world around it by invented narratives.

From the eighth to the sixth centuries the Greek myths went through a decisive stage of their poetic redaction, in the form of the epic. The principal cognitive tool evolved by this mythical fiction, as a key to reality, was the category of human diversity, which was paralleled by the distinct characters of gods and heroes. The concept itself was a Homeric heritage [above, p. 63]. In their post-Homeric, Archaic phase most Greek myths were given the shape in which we still know them. From the scattered fragments of ancient folk tales and names dimly remembered the vast mythical fabric was created of the strife between gods and men in which multifarious life became mirrored and events understood as the effect of causes. Never before have the seriousness and reality of human situations been revealed so lucidly; have the crises of decision, the fatal interplay of human wills, and the force of circumstances been so impressively shown. Myth was the given theme of the epic. Under its impact, in Greek thought, the world became narratable even before it became knowable in terms of science. Clearly the grasp of reality in a myth differs from that which descriptive science offers. A myth is not a true statement of fact, nor a direct representation of a reality at hand: it rather constitutes the opposite, namely a transfer of experienced facts into a created fantasy. Yet as such it can be turned into a reasoned account of events, however fictitious; indeed, a guide to reality. In this realistic exploitation of the myth the Greeks went farther than anyone else.

When during the Archaic period the collection, and in a sense rationalization, of the myths became a primary intellectual concern in Greece, a large reservoir of singularly memorable plots and stories came into being. Naturally, in this process the literary arts took the lead. However, mythical themes appear in Greek pictorial arts at a very early time. This interest in a properly literary subject matter must by no means be taken for granted. It is rather distinctive of Greek art, and an obvious reflection of the overwhelming influence which myth exercised on Greek minds. One can well understand the challenge which the mythical narratives extended to the figurative arts under such circumstances. Even to us today these fables appear so charged with human meaning that the attempt to extricate from their often strange and not rarely brutal happenings their recondite messages still remains a worthwhile undertaking. Awareness of myth had indeed become a source of knowledge; myth was a form in which the conditions of human lives and actions could be made explicit. Already by the end of the century the latest, classic mode of these narratives began to appear as a possibility: the Greek drama.

A Critique of human personality was clearly implied with this development. The qualities of uniqueness and importance accrue to mythical actions precisely because they relate the deeds accomplished, or the mishaps suffered, by certain personages. In such a scheme of thought the gods, by dint of the very diversity of functions ascribed to them and the powers which [p. 143] they yield, presented the traits and limitations of definable characters. Zeus behaved differently from Apollo; Artemis differently from Aphrodite. The deities of Greek mythology became subject to the laws of mutual attraction and repulsion which we call love and hatred. As persons they explained themselves through their actions, because each acted 'characteristically'. In short, they became the enormously enlarged proto-images of human character-types, defined by personal temperaments, idiosyncrasies, and social involvements. Therefore on a more human level heroes could be interpreted by the same tokens. In Homer the noble and unforgiving character of Achilles resembles that of Apollo. The theme was given, but the interpretations always remained free.

Our principal point here must be that all these are essentially literary notions; and that in this sense most Greek art which incorporated them was and always remained a literary art. The result was inevitable, not only because so much Greek art actually represented myths or mythologized, that is personalized, religion, but also because with effects even more comprehensive, mythology had generally become a heuristic principle in Greek thought, by which to search out an ever-growing fund of insights into both nature and human conduct. At this stage one can say that the gods were both real as the wielders of forces, and fictional as human metaphors. Myth, of course, must be regarded as a form of literature even though it be handed down only by word of mouth, not in writing; yet most Greek myths were actually committed to writing during the sixth century, if not before. The Greek world simply was a world founded on literature, intellectually, because myth, which is a literary form of narrative, had come to mould the common modes of knowledge. As a matter of course, artists shared these universal interests and experiences, like everyone else. But as a consequence an entire new dimension of meaning and connotations accrued to the visual images of art, beyond that primary symbolism which all images convey by themselves as representations of reality. The power of the artist to bind the ineffable and abstract in concrete and visible forms was thus enormously extended. While the art which grew from these notions was literary, it rarely was literal, in the sense of furnishing illustrations to given texts. It contributed freely in its own concrete ways to the common stock of experience, memories, and insights.[1]

Religion and Myth in Etruria.
The difference of scope, in spite of the formal similarities, between the early arts of Greece and Etruria becomes strikingly apparent in the light of these considerations. It is indeed fundamental [see p. 64]. Nor did the Archaic period in any way alter these conditions: if anything it aggravated them. Virtually none of the statements made just now regarding the place of mythical literature in Archaic Greece would apply to Etruria. The Etruscan was not a society founded on literature. Least of all was its culture--as it was--based on poetic fiction.

It is greatly to be regretted that so comparatively little is known to us about early Etruscan lore. On the other hand this fact is in itself indicative of the non-literary character of this Etruscan civilization as a whole. Obviously much information, of a kind that would be reflected in Greek poetry, was not recorded or not preserved in writing in Etruria. Yet an important intellectual development undoubtedly took place in central Italy also between the eighth and the sixth centuries. There is reason to assume that, as in Greece, religion was both the original cause and the instrument of this development. However in Etruria religion itself took a different turn; and the same seems true of Rome.

The continuation of an ancient Italian tendency to personify significant actions is especially noticeable in Rome: for instance Consus is the god who hides; Janus the god of transit. Remarkable in these notions is their high level of abstraction. Any 'hiding' may conceivably fall within the province of Consus; any 'transit' - through a gate, crossing a bridge, from one period of time to another--within the competence of Janus.[2] As symbols these abstractions [p. 144] no less than the Greek myths represent a progress towards a world known more firmly by detail. Yet in their case the mental act of personification was not followed by subsequent personalization. There were no myths worth telling about Consus, Janus, and their ilk. Appearances strongly indicate that in Etruria as well as Rome those divine characters which by origin and concept were capable of assimilation to Greek gods and goddesses, such as Tinia-Zeus, Uni-Hera, Turms-Hermes, and others, received what mythology they later possessed from Greece, together with their human shapes and distinctive attributes.

In a somewhat different fashion, in Etruscan religion the powers which direct cosmic nature and, within the boundaries of nature, human affairs became systematized rather than personalized. The universe was mapped out, in order to learn from it the meaning and origin of portents. Again in this systematic order of concepts, foreign to early Greek thought, a contribution to intellectual progress was certainly included, though one the full impact of which it is now difficult to assess. The books containing this store of superstition and knowledge, the Etruscan Disciplina, are wholly lost. There can be no doubt that in their turn they too constituted a case of literature. It is equally certain that the importance of this literature for the arts was negligible.[3]

Yet central Italy was not without its own native myths. Some were definitely religious, though of a type quite different from the Greek. Of such a kind was the story of the prophetic child, Tages, who rose from the fresh furrow of a ploughed field to reveal the Etruscan doctrine. More common was another sort of stories which we may call historical myths and which deal with the divine or semi-divine ancestors and founders of tribes, clans, or cities. The worship of 'gentile' deities assigned to individual families was definitely Etruscan, but what was told about them, if anything, we scarcely know. On the other hand in Roman folklore such tales formed and were preserved possibly at a quite early period; and some of these folk memories, however confusedly, refer to conditions and names recognizably Etruscan. To this category belong the curious traditions regarding the queen and sorceress. Tanaquil, held to be the mythical ancestress of the Tarquin dynasty in Rome; the stories of Romulus himself must also be so classified. In the end the legends in this vein led to a form of saga rather than true myths; such as the saga of Mastearna and his dealings with the early kings of Rome.[4] Characteristic of all these stories is their avowed aim to explain existing conditions. They are legendary history. Only at a comparatively late date--if at all--did poetry and the arts concern themselves with this mythology, and even then it appears that the astounding events from which history followed mattered more than the plausibility as personal characters of heroes who were after all no more than the fateful tools of providence. The epic of the Roman empire, Vergil's Aenid, expresses this spirit most monumentally. Achilles in Homer is a more interesting character than Aeneas. The reason is not that Vergil lacked insight and realism, but that his emphasis was not directed towards the invention of a human character for its own sake. His hero existed, acted, and suffered for the sake of history. To that extent he was not the principal theme of the poem.

Two conclusions emerge from a survey of early Italian, Roman and Etruscan, intellectuality as we know it. In its progress towards a fuller knowledge of human reality we observe a split rather than a unified tendency. On the one hand deified abstractions become an essential means of intellectual orientation. It is obvious that as philosophical idea, a 'god of transit' can inspire a great deal of thought. Over the centuries the god Janus indeed became the subject of very subtle speculations, which culminated in late classical theology. But even if a god of this kind be believed in, he merely stands for one prescribed thought. He cannot act as a person, beyond the limits of his abstract function. Neither can he be interpreted as a human character or, on this level, add anything specific to human knowledge.

On the other hand we find universally revered deities whose origin was really in the private worship of individual clans and the home, and [p. 145] whose functions were often elemental. There was a tendency in many cases to conceive of them also as communal deities, as happened to Vertumnus of Volsinii. Some among their number were in time equated with names of Greek mythology, as the Roman-Etruscan Saturnus eventually appropriated the myths and functions of Greek Kronos.[5] However these more or less artificial equations were mostly due to later developments, and early Italian art profited but little by them: rather the mythical pedigrees and clannish cults tended to confirm the Etruscan propensity to turn to immediate reality as the true locus of human experience while disregarding the cognitive values which may be incorporated with poetic fiction. After all, from the mythical ancestors descended the living families, real institutions, real history. Again the emphasis was on the actual.

Consequently what was lacking in Etruria was not so much literature as that specific trend of literary thinking which in Greece expressed itself so lavishly in mythical fiction. It follows that Etruscan art could not by its own resources become a literary art, as Greek art did. During the Archaic period, under Greek impact, human representations moved into the focus of attention as the most worthwhile subject of art, but even then their purpose cannot always have been the same as in Greece. The mythical foundation was missing. It is a telling symptom of the difference between Etruscan and Greek conditions that down to the middle of the sixth century not one Etruscan representation can be with certainty identified as an image of deity. If the gods were at all human, as some were certainly thought to be, they were not specified as characters and hardly even by standard attributes; hence our difficulty in recognizing them. It seems that it was only with the advance of the Archaic period that the Etruscan pantheon became more articulately humanized. At that time Greek images and pictured narratives brought an awareness of the personal--not merely magic or demoniac--character of deity into Etruria, for the first time in her cultural history.[6] The tendency gained momentum towards 550, but what place these essentially foreign mythologies came to assume in the general framework of Archaic Etruscan art remains to be seen. [p. 146]

Myth and Its Uses
The Chariot from Monteleone. One monument above all calls for attention here: the bronze chariot from Monteleone, now in New York [97-9]. At the threshold of the second Archaic period, it opens the series of Etruscan masterpieces which continues after the middle of the century; it also gives the most impressive testimony of the new interest in mythological subjects then stirring in Etruria.[7] At long last the human theme has come into its own; the Greek influence is obvious. Moreover for composition and execution the chariot easily passes as the most splendid, as well as the most perfectly preserved, example of Archaic metallic art in our possession.[8] Three large reliefs decorate its outer surface. Like all its other ornament they were hammered out from thin sheets of bronze in the common Archaic repoussé technique, with details added by way of sometimes very fine incised design. In accordance with the structural form, which follows a customary Etruscan type of chariot, each relief is contained in an arched frame, the centre panel covering the high, curved front wall being the largest of the three. A smaller frieze around the base of the chariot represents groups of fighting animals, demons, and monsters.

The large reliefs are exceedingly interesting; but they also present certain problems. The centre panel shows a bearded man and a woman facing each other while a spotted fawn lies on the ground between them, obviously dead [97]. Together they hold the large Boeotian shield and the helmet, which form the middle axis of the composition. From the sky birds swoop down, perhaps as lucky omens. There can be little doubt about the meaning of this scene. The woman hands the weapon to the warrior; no other explanation seems to make sense. [p. 146]

In the side panel to the left two heroes are dueling over the body of a third, already despoiled of his armour except for the greaves [98]. The victor again wears a Boeotian shield, of the same form if somewhat different decoration as the one featured in the front panel. He receives miraculous aid in the form of a bird apparently interfering with the spear which his unfortunate adversary is aiming at his head; at the same time the tip of the spear bends, deflected by the hard [p. 148] metal of the seemingly invincible helmet. In the third panel, which sheathed the right wall of the chariot, a hero without armour is represented in a vehicle almost identical to the chariot itself, drawn by two winged horses [99]. The foremost horse is actually flying, in a curious galloping gait;[9] simultaneously it is lifted upward, or so it seems, by the reclining woman in the left lower corner. The other horse still has its hind legs on the ground, but prances ready to take off. [p. 149]

The soliloquizing stage of early Etruscan art has clearly ended here, much later than in Greece. People face each other. There is interaction and discourse; there is also, as a result, drama and sentiment. From the dreamy solitude of mere existence, which was all the earlier one-way compositions could express as long as each creature was restricted to marching behind some other phantom equally incapable of communication, these persons have descended to a level of social coexistence. They meet in conflicts and agreements; they are aware of each other and united by the necessity of mutual action, which is the law governing all human reality. They have consequently begun to represent something other, and more, than the magnificently undisturbed pageant of images which was the pride of the Orientalizing decorators, and which from now on will be an obsolete form of art, though one long surviving.

The foremost means by which art makes the dialogistical nature of human situations explicit is antithetical composition, as against one-way processions. This was not in itself a new device, though earlier Etruscan art hardly made use of it. Even Greek art progressed rather slowly in this direction. One reason certainly was that many decorative purposes of ancient art favoured horizontal friezes, which in the classical tradition retained a greater importance as a common mode of pictorial composition than they have ever enjoyed since. Friezes naturally invite that merely enumerating sequence of images which, if living beings are represented, properly constitutes a 'procession'. Nevertheless in classical art frieze compositions often became centered instead of moving evenly in one direction, thus indicating that the idea of the frieze itself underwent changes under the influence of the antithetical concept. The latter principle prevailed entirely in post-medieval art. Emphasized further by the almost universal use of four-sided frames, it largely determines for us today our conception of the nature of a painting.

The antithetical compositions of the chariot from Monteleone are of the utmost simplicity and thus truly Archaic. Moreover they are highly patterned; hence the difficulty of their interpretation. The pleasure in standard formulae of course was merely another Archaic trait, and indeed one which art and epic poetry held in common. But the fact that it is so much in evidence here may serve as a reminder that we are dealing with an art still near the borderline between generic and specific representation. Thus to the generic formula 'heroes duelling', any desired names can be attached.[10] Which name specifically the artist had in mind we have little way of knowing. Doubts have in fact been raised that these three reliefs represent any mythical action at all.[11] Yet the evidence rather favours the assumption that a definite action was intended. Indeed the panels seem to tell a story in three scenes, as follows: hero receives armour [from divine mother?]; he overcomes adversary in duel; he travels to heaven in a chariot with winged horses supported by the reclining earth-goddess. Perhaps we should not try to name him.[12] It is true that the story of Achilles fits this narrative scheme in some ways, but so does the story of Aeneas; and while in the Aenid the tale of Venus providing armour for her son was probably patterned after the Iliad, it appears by no means certain that Vergil was the first to add this episode to the life of his Italian hero. It may well have been told according to the same pattern at a much earlier time. The ascension by chariot certainly constitutes a bit of folklore well established in ancient Italy. Although neither Homer nor Vergil reported this end for their respective heroes, we know that miraculous disappearance taking the place of normal death was in Italy ascribed to Aeneas, as it was to Romulus.[13]

Another question presents itself here, from the point of view of stylistic criticism. If, as seems likely, the events represented in the three large panels of the New York chariot have one and the same protagonist, they obviously constitute a continuous whole: they tell their story progressively. Consequently they incorporate an important characteristic of that illustrative method which is now best known from Roman and Early Christian art, and often described by the term 'continuous narrative'.[14] Greek art on [p. 150] the whole was reluctant to accept this form of narrative by progressive episodes; instead it preferred to collect the essential aspects of a story in one single action. For this reason one must doubt that the narrative method of the bronze chariot was derived from a Greek source, even if the story itself was Greek, which is uncertain. On the other hand, in this case as on previous occasions Phoenician metal bowls may well be taken into consideration as possible sources of early art in Italy, for progressive narratives indeed occur on them. They even appear in the manner of a truly 'continuous narration ', in which the individual scenes are not divided by frames but lined up in uninterrupted friezes.[15] The occasional use of a 'continuous' method in Archaic Etruscan art is probably best explained by the presence of these oriental examples rather than by Greek ones. On the New York chariot the hero appears three times, though in panels separated by frames. This fact constitutes a modification of the underlying narrative principle. Of greater significance seems another modification which comes to the fore in the sequence of the narrative scenes. One would expect that the warrior received his arms first, the duel followed, and the apotheosis came last. In a continuous frieze things might well have been so arranged. Yet on the chariot, because of the dominant role of the front panel, a different order was indicated. The initial scene, in which the weapons are handed to the hero, was singled out for the middle panel. Therefore in this arrangement one reads the story from the front panel backwards, as it were, by proceeding from the middle to the two side panels. The latter are co-ordinated with, and at the same time subordinated to, the medial relief, thus functioning like the two lateral wings of a triptych. This interruption of the natural temporal order in favour of an abstract compositional principle, and the ensuing emphasis on the compositional centre, represent Greek tendencies, at least in spirit. Similarly in the famous Corinthian krater representing the departure of Amphiaraos, the apparent frieze composition is actually broken up into three parts, with the centre reserved for the hero.[16]

The master of the New York chariot was a very competent craftsman, and an excellent designer. One must assume that he grew up within the orbit of Corinthian art. However, Ionian contacts are not altogether missing, as might be expected in a work which on account of its own style as well as that of the objects found with it must be dated near the year 550.[17] There is a certain grandeur about his figures, an austere monumentality still reminiscent of earlier Etruscan statuary on the level for instance of the alabaster lady from the Polledrara cemetery [80, 81]. His characters move with noticeable restraint, as if not yet accustomed to the freedom of expression which the new art demanded of them; but they act with remarkable decision and clarity nevertheless. The relief of the 'Ascension', especially, shows the virtues of this style to the best advantage, which combines great certainty of form with a keen power of observation. Two strange standing kouroi are placed at the corners between front panel and side walls. Their angular forms exhibit that tendency towards harsh geometrization which sometimes manifests itself in the more provincial regions of Etruscan Early Archaic art; the great bronze disc at St Louis can once more be adduced for comparison [54]. It has been remarked that the kouroi have their closest parallels in north-east Etruria.[18] Be this as it may, the chariot as a whole was most likely produced near the place of its discovery, which is the region of Perugia; the artists may have immigrated, perhaps from different parts. Their work confronts us with an early product of those umbrian workshops which during the following decades made so outstanding a contribution to the Archaic art of Etruria.

Ornate as it is, this vehicle was hardly meant for service; more probably it was created only for the funeral procession and for deposition in the tumulus. The choice of imagery selected for its decoration may well have been dictated by this purpose. Any story which ends with an ascension to heaven--a moment of abduction as well as salvation--can lend itself to the symbolical expression and mythical confirmation of a belief in existence beyond the tomb. [p. 151]