Untitled Flashcards Set

The sculpture

Most Etruscan sculptures come from funerary objects (and on the other hand almost all the art of this civilization is linked to religion and the cult of the afterlife).
In this context fits the divinatory practice of the soothsayers who read in the
entrails of animals the will of the gods with the help of bronze models (like the famous
sheep liver from the 4th century BC) to identify the correspondences between the celestial and terrestrial worlds.
The archaic age of Etruscan sculpture is characterized by the production of urns, called canopies,
with lid in the shape of a human head, perhaps reproducing the features of the deceased.
The canopic was placed on a sort of seat with a concave back inserted into a large one
clay container (called ziro) preserved in the burial chamber.
The face is depicted synthetically and without idealization. What emerges, however, is
a sort of typification, that is, the desire to capture and accentuate the essential elements
of the face to represent a human physical “type”, rather than a specific individual

From Cerveteri come some clay sarcophagi in the shape of a convivial bed with one or two people recumbent (i.e. lying on their side) in the act of participating in their own funeral banquet with living relatives.
 
hairstyle, facial expression and folds of the robe even made one think of a Greek artist working in the Etruscan territories.
But the lightness and naturalism of the dress is missing, the effect becomes violent and dynamic.
The very use of terracotta, instead of marble, gives the sculptures a fragility
and a materiality far from the idealization of Greek art

Between the end of the 6th and the beginning of the 5th century, one of the most significant bronze sculptures of Etruscan art dates back to the Capitoline Wolf, symbol of the legendary origins of the city of
Rome (and perhaps commissioned by the Romans).
The animal, with a growling expression, stands firmly on all fours and turns its head to the left. The appearance is harsh and aggressive.
The she-wolf is not treated with realism but interpreted to grasp its meaning: the structure
bone is evident (the beast, therefore, is ravenous), the swollen vein on the muzzle reveals its nervous tension, the swollen breasts indicate the state of a mother ready to fight for
defend the litter (the addition of the little Romulus and Remus, completing the myth
of the foundation of Rome, is the work of Antonio del Pollaiolo, in the 15th century).