Etruscan Art - Notes

Chapter 16 Painting and Metalwork
[Note: References to plates are included in the text. The plates are not included in this computer document.]

I N D E X

Tomb Painting at Tarquinia
Tomb of the Lionesses
Tomb of Hunting and Fishing
Tomb of the Baron.

T E X T
Tomb Painting at Tarquinia
Tomb of the Lionesses.
At Targuinia the new period is ushered in by the magnificent paintings of the so-called Tomb of the Lionesses [120-2].[1] For the first time a change becomes apparent in the architectural order which had come into being, as we saw, shortly after the middle of the century. In the tomb of the Lionesses the decorative divisions of the walls differ in important respects from the Archaic standard scheme exemplified, for instance, by the Tomb of the Augurs [above, pp. 168 ff.]. The border zone of parallel stripes which there took the place of an architrave has been omitted. This leaves two major horizontal divisions instead of the original three: the figured frieze, occupying the upper third of all four walls, and the dado. The latter is separated from the wall frieze by a border not unlike a wooden plank, which supports the figures and is in turn supported by a row of upside-down palmettes. There are also other irregularities. The dado represents water from which dolphins gaily jump; flying birds populate the free air overhead. Stranger still, wooden columns are painted in the four corners of the funerary chamber, and two similar columns divide the lateral friezes about the middle, cutting across the horizontal divisions. Thereby the placement of the frieze acquires an element of structural [p. 185] unreality even more pronounced than in the Tomb of the Bulls [above, p. 165]. On the other hand the pediments are treated as before. In the one to the rear, on either side of the central post, one finds the two animals which gave the tomb its name, although in fact they resemble female panthers more than lionesses.

These changes have symptomatic importance. They demonstrate the strength of the new concept of painting, valued as an art in its own right and growing ever more independent of the architectural order. Quite logically, in the ensuing evolution of Targuinian mural decoration, the architectural concepts which formed its point of departure could not long be observed and become, in fact, dissolved. With the Tomb of the Lionesses wall painting in Targuinia has entered into its third phase, or 'style'.

Simultaneously one notices a shift of thematic interest from games to banquets, enlivened by dancers. This change, also, proved symptomatic. The banquet was to remain a favourite theme of Etruscan art, even beyond the Archaic period.[2] Whether, round the walls of a tomb, such frolics represented the actual festivities of the living or a fabled life of bliss ascribed to the dead, it is difficult to decide. The distinction may not have weighed so heavily in antiquity as it would now. Even in real funerary celebrations the dead were easily thought of as silent partners in the joys of the living. Possibly the decoration of the dado contains a clue to the underlying idea. Are these the waters across which the dead were supposed to sail? The thought would add an element of Utopian fantasy to the happenings rendered in the frieze, but the matter is not at all certain. Neither is it unique; for instance in the Tomb of Hunting and Fishing [below, pp. 187 ff.] the upper contour of the dado was also transformed into a stylized representation of water, in a very similar fashion.

In their airy pavilion, open to the sea breezes, the banqueters recline, two on either side, husky young men with fashionably trimmed blond hair and short curly heads. The people on the rear wall, towards which they turn, one must assume to be entertainers. An enormous mixing bowl wreathed with vine leaves stands in the centre of that wall. Its size more than matches the bronze krater of Vix;[3] the ladle hangs near by. Across this imposing vessel two musicians face one another, one a lyre player, the other a flutist. Farther to the right a boy and girl perform a gay and rather suggestive pantomime. On the other side a richly robed and hooded young woman dances a solo to the accompaniment of her castanets.

Together, taken at face value, all this imagery represents genre painting pure and simple. There is nothing mythical about it. Even if the thought of a happy beyond was implied, the enjoyments it offered were earthly indeed. The style fits the mood. Especially in the design of the large and somewhat hefty limbs of the men, the love of broad forms and stout monumentality which we find in the Tomb of the Augurs still lingers on [above, p. 170]. I count the Tomb of the Lionesses as a later instance of the same monumental style, closely related to the frieze of the Augurs but of more advanced date, c. 520-510. A new sense of refinement has been added to the massive forms, expressed chiefly in a much richer colour scale. The figure of the flamenco dancer represents a tour de force of Archaic painting composed of a variety of flat, decorative colour planes. Outline drawing, to, was on a high level: witness the delicate figure of a small flutist who faces the first diner on wall III [122]. I doubt that this puzzling character was intended to look androgynous, as has been suggested.[4] Rather the artist found some difficulty in rendering the childish form of a very young boy. As in other Archaic Etruscan paintings, children add to the fun at the banquet, as do the tame animals.

Tomb of Hunting and Fishing.
This tomb consists of two connecting chambers [1243-6].[5] In each the decorative order follows the Archaic standard scheme, with an upper zone parallel stripes in lieu of an entablature. A chain of leaves and buds hangs from the lowest stripe in the first chamber. In the second chamber one finds the dado transformed into a seascape [125], in much the same manner as in the Tomb of the Lionesses.[6]

By far the greater portion of the wall space is given to figured friezes, interrupted only by the doors and, in the second chamber, by a niche in the right upper corner of the rear wall. In addition the pediments are also decorated. Together these representations form a most enjoyable ensemble, remarkable equally for its spirit, execution, and iconography. The pleasures of the banquet are combined with dance and music, as well as with the no less ancient funerary theme of the hunt. Merry-makers dance to the sound of a flute under high trees in the first chamber, on a plinth painted solid red [123]. The trees are hung with all sorts of desirable objects, perhaps prizes to be earned by the dancers. On the rear wall, above the door leading to the second [p. 187] chamber, the pediment shows a hunting party in a forest [124]. Two of the hunters ride on horses; it is likely that they represent the masters. Obviously the same timeless situation which we know already from the Campana Tomb [above, p. 121] has here once more been illustrated. We shall not see it again, however. Apparently this once so popular topic was soon afterwards dropped from the Etruscan funerary repertoire. But certainly the forest had never been portrayed more alive, with so delectable a variety of plants, tree, and undergrowth.

Evidently the hunt above this door preludes the theme elaborated in the inner chamber. But here the sea is dominant, people with playing dolphins and little boats from which the boys spear fish or cast their hooked lines [ 125]. The hunters are striking young men who, one from a promontory and the other on a rock rising abruptly from the water, aim their slings at the crowd of birds which fills the air. From still another cliff--the highest--a boy dives into the sea before a small boat waiting to pick him up. The onlooker is reminded of the steep Tyrrhenian coast, say, below Cosa.

This vast panorama, in which the details follow each other without apparent formal constraint, stretchers all around the room. From its upper delimitation, the striped 'architrave', hang wreaths of various design and colour. As in the first room, the coloration is gay and variegated, in contrast, for instance, to the more severe, more restricted colour scheme one remembers from the Tomb of the Augurs. Blue and greenish tints abound; black is almost absent. Only the outlines which describe the contours of boats, men, and animals range in tone from dark-brown to a near black.

The convivial wreaths may be taken as a transitional element hinting at the banquet in [p. 188] the pediment above the rear wall. Different from the Tomb of the Lionesses, however, the banquet here takes the form of the festive family meal which just about this time seems to emerge as a standard topic of Late Archaic Etruscan art [126]. A bearded man and a richly dressed woman recline on a low bench or mattress. The man holds a finely wrought drinking bowl in his left hand. His right rests on the shoulder of the woman. Her white right arm and hand are extended to touch his chest, while in the other hand she seems to offer him one of the ubiquitous chaplets. Smaller figures, possible children, wait on the couple. The whole scene is strictly centralized; it is also divided, equally strictly, into a masculine and a feminine half. On the side of the man the younger boys serve as waiters. One is about to fetch a refill from the [p. 189] large krater in the center; a lyre hangs on the wall. On the side of the woman one sees a female flute-player and two seated young girls, all perhaps servants. The one near the corner seems to bind a wreath from materials contained in a low basket before her. Here the object on the wall represents a cylindrical box or basket with small feet and an arched handle, of a shape not unlike the later cistae from Palestrina.

Hardly sufficient attention has yet been paid to the diversity of compositional principles embodied in these various representation. The dancers in the first chamber do not form a truly continuous frieze; instead they tend to stage antithetical groups. More important still, the intrinsic continuity of the wall frieze is effectively countered by high trees which grow at regular intervals, thus enclosing each figure in a measured and framed field of its own. A similar ornamental tendency to emphasize 'panel' against 'frieze' composition appeared in Italian art as early as the Villanovan level [above, p. 36]. The nearest parallels, however, to the dancers between the trees are found in orientalizing works such as the golden bracelets in the Vatican and their Phoenician prototypes [above, p . 69]. To divide a frieze into rectangular panels was not a Greek habit. Therefore it becomes likely that the reappearance of this device in the Tomb of Hunting and Fishing was due rather to a domestic tradition.

The orientalizing scheme of composition cannot, however, explain another stylistic peculiarity of the same frieze, namely, the comparative smallness of its figures. The trees loom large above the human gaiety, conveying the idea of a pleasant grove, if not a forest. The seascape in the second chamber differs from this composition in so far as it forms a continuous, panoramic frieze; but it does share with the frieze of the dancers the small scale of the humans. This distinction by size, between people and environment, constitutes a matter of considerable importance. To have the human protagonists play their parts on so vast a stage of nature implies an interpretation of the human status itself. I should call this interpretation a naturalistic one; not only because in reality trees are often taller than humans and mountains still higher, but also because an art which reduced human existence to something near its true size is apt, by the same token, to point up the independent character of man's natural surroundings. Every attempt in this direction revises visibly the balance between the human and the extra-human world. It presupposes a naturalistic outlook, even when all the details cannot be termed naturalistic by modern standards. The point is that in compositions of this kind the people together with all other creatures shown, are contained by one large, wide-open world of nature. The painting makes it clear beyond doubt that this world exists wholly by itself and not only with reference to man, though man may inhabit it. In this impartiality towards the non-human manifestations of existence we recognize a trend which in Etruscan monuments had come to the fore previously, in the Tombs of the Bulls [above, pp. 165 ff.]

Among the prevailingly anthropocentric arts of antiquity the antecedents of this pictorial naturalism are not easy to trace. Certainly these dancers under trees and the hunters by the sea must be counted among the earliest representations on record, in any art, of peaceful people in a setting of landscape that actually contains them. Previously the Assyrian reliefs which narrated the king's wars had attempted something comparable, in their attention to scenery and their tendency to subordinate persons to setting.[7] But they are too far r moved in time, geography, and purpose for us to allow any direct connection with the Etruscan paintings. Examples from Greek art are not altogether lacking, and nearer in time,[8] but they are neither frequent nor similar enough to be of substantial help in explaining this emergence of naturalism in Archaic Etruria. The littleness of man in his encounter with nature was not as a rule a theme of Greek art before the Hellenistic period.

Their remains the question whether the general concept of naturalism which seems to permeate this imagery did not extend to the details as well, and ought to suggest that their obvious liveliness derived from immediate observation rather than tradition. Many of these [p. 191] details give a very spontaneous impression; therein lies their charm. But the line between spontaneity and convention is difficult to draw in any ancient art. At least one figure which occurs twice in the second frieze, the striding hunter on a rock, can be recognized as a patterned image well known from yet another tradition of art, namely, Egyptian painting. In fact the entire frieze may be said to reproduce, however freely, a theme of Egyptian iconography: fishing on the Nile and the pursuit of jungle fowl.[9] The coincidence is probably not fortuitous, even though at present one cannot verify the means by which these foreign topics were communicated to Etruria.[10]

Another irregularity yet to be mentioned results from style rather than iconography. If one applies to every unit of this decoration the same criterion regarding the relative sizes of persons and environments, remarkable discrepancies become apparent. Only in the wall friezes does the world appear large, the figures small. In the two figure pediments the proportions are reversed. The hunters in the first pediment are represented taller than the trees among which they march. Moreover, each figure reaches to the full height of the frame. Consequently the illusion of airy space which characterizes the friezes is lacking. The banquet pediment in the second chamber follows the same tendency, even enhances it. In its grand design the drinking couple dominates the centre by mere mass. There is hardly an empty space left round the reclining diners, nor round the other figures which crowd inside the frame. Clearly this composition aims at monumentality at the expense of open space. It defines the pictorial forms as broad, flat areas of color; zigzag folds appear only once, in the light-green border of the lady's coat. But all these internal differences notwithstanding there seems to be no need to speak of different style, nor of different workshops in the decoration of this tomb. The small figures which populate the cliffs and the sea show the same bulging outlines and belong to the same stocky breed as the large banqueters above them. Nor is an air of spontaneity excluded from the monumentality of the upper painting. We are dealing not with two distinct styles but with two different modes of the same style, simultaneously employed: one more formal and monumental, the other more naturalistic, looser in its approach to composition and in the invention of postures and attitudes, more variable.

There is no ready explanation of this apparent anomaly. We must remember, however, that, from early times, the peoples of Italy, were accustomed to the presence in their midst of competing artistic traditions both native and imported. Precepts of art could be interchanged more arbitrarily in these conditions than was possible in the more integrated societies of the ancient Mediterranean such as the Greek. The master who decorated the Tomb of Hunting and Fishing was obviously capable of more than one manner of composition. But within each unit the mode he has chosen was handled consistently and with full understanding. The unity of style in the resulting variety is maintained by the generally similar build of the human figures, be they large or small. The banquet pediment demonstrates his competence in monumental composition, paired with refinement of detail; it also shows most clearly the origin of his style. The drawing of the human form and the broad planes of colour are obviously related to the paintings in the Tomb of the Lionesses and, ultimately, to the Tomb of the Augurs: the artist may well have learned his trade in the workshop of the latter. We may date this tomb, approximately, to the last decade of the century. Postures and outlines of the figures indicate the Greek, Ionian substratum of this style. Contact with the atelier of the Caeretan hydriae likewise seems probable in a work which proves itself a descendant of the Tomb of the Augurs. Finally, a presumable connection with Caere and the Busiris Master can perhaps shed some light on the Egyptian reminiscences so freely transformed but nonetheless noticeable in the marine frieze. Such references to things Egyptian, possibly based on personal knowledge and utilized with an independent wit, seem to have been in the tradition of the Busiris Master himself [above, pp. 171 ff.]. [p. 191]

Tomb of the Baron.
The name refers to Baron Kestner, whose efforts led to the discovery of this tomb in 1827.[11] Round the walls of the one burial-chamber the decoration follows the Archaic standard schema of a quasi-architectural division into three horizontal bands: parallel stripes in lieu of an architrave; in the middle a figured frieze which occupies approximately one half of the wall; and the bottom zone which assumes the function of a dado, although here it is not differentiated by colour from the rest of the wall, and is separated from the piece above solely by two parallel coloured lines. In addition, the pediments are also decorated, showing in the middle the base with concavely curving sides often seen in this place, supposedly supporting the roof-beam; the latter is painted a solid red. Two hippocamps, one on either side, are antithetically arranged left and right of the centre, each accompanied by two supportive dolphins [127].

The paintings, which count among the finest at Tarquinia, were executed in a quite unusual technique. The walls were not coated with plaster, as is the case in most other tombs of this period. Instead the figures were painted directly on the carefully levigated rock into which the tomb was carved, thus preserving the ivory tone of the natural stone. A greyish underpaint was used, however, to sketch broadly the outlines of each separate figure and object. It is still visible in many places, accompanying the final contours as a delicate and cloud-like foil. The colours themselves are solid and opaque, standing out strongly and with still undiminished brightness from the stone ground.

The most evident characteristic of the frieze is the formal, almost ceremonial conduct of all its personages. Instead of the vividness and vital exuberance which most Targuinian tomb decoration of the Archaic and Early Classical periods liked to display, this artist preferred quiet elegance and a minimum of action. In the centre of the rear wall, the focus of attention, a well groomed gentleman with his arm round a blond boy who serves him as flute player, walks briskly towards a tall standing woman, apparently to offer her the drinking bowl in his outstretched left hand. The lady, likewise, is stylishly dressed, complete with diadem, large [p. 192] earrings, and a dark-red mantilla falling over the shoulders from her high cap. She raises both hands in a gesture, most likely of greeting. Of all the scenes shown, their encounter comes closest to a definable action; we may accept it as a reminiscence of the obligatory drinking feast [128]

Two youths on horseback fill the fields left and right of this group, and two more lead horses from which they have dismounted, facing each other, on the right wall of the tomb. An almost identical group is seen on the opposite wall, where, however, the two young men seem to talk eagerly to a woman standing between them. Conceivably this group might portray the Dioscuri with Helen, or perhaps Leda, in the middle. But the context of the frieze hardly favours any mythical explanation. We see polite, courtly behaviour on all sides; not much really happens.

It seems likely that contemporary Greek vase painting set the pace for these unassuming exchanges of conversation: pictures of situations rather than actions. Here the new impact of Attic vases makes itself felt, alongside the persistent Ionian idiosyncrasies basic to this style. Attic vase painting was then in its stage of transition from black-figured to red-figured representation; evidently the painter of the Tomb of the Baron was au courant with this development. Details of his design--folds of garments and the scarce indications of anatomy--are on a level with such Attic masters as Oltos or Euthymedes. The exquisitely painted group of the flute player and his merry master arranges two striding figures parallel to one another in such a way that the nearer almost overlaps the farther. This novel idea of grouping was almost certainly derived from an Attic source, probably a painted vase.[12] There is sufficient evidence, however, to show that for all his Greek borrowings the artist was actually trained in the local tradition. His predilection for rigidly centralized and heraldic composition hardly squares with prevailing Greek tastes.[13] Costumes are Etruscan, not Greek; and the avenue of equidistant trees, now already a familiar mark of Etruscan monuments, again separates and encases groups and individuals. Moreover, an analysis of form, especially of the principal group, can make it quite clear that one is dealing with a work due to a follower of the Augur Master. The differences between [p. 193] his paintings and other decoration of the Augur group, for instance, the Tomb of the Lionesses, are more apparent than real: more of mood than of style. The tomb of the Baron is, of course, the later work; I should date it near the year 500. But the contours, the stocky build of the men have not changed, in spite of the obvious refinement of detail. Among the details there appears here a new symptom which bears watching: the curiously decorative, undulating line representing eyebrows [128]. This mannerism seems difficult to match in Greek art, but it can be found in other works of Etruscan manufacture, as we shall soon learn. The chances are that it was also a manifestation of domestic taste. Symptoms such as these are evidence in fact of the progressive consolidation of a western, Etruscan tradition of monumental painting [p. 194]