delle Iscrizioni is the Tomba del Barone, discovered at Corneto in
1827 and named, as already mentioned, after Baron Kestner. After the
paintings of this tomb Stackelberg executed a fine water-colour, and
Thürmer a number of drawings, now in the University of Strasburg.
The style—both in the shape of the heads and in the treatment of
the draperies—is still Ionic, but the proportions are more slender,
probably owing to Chian or Attic influence.
Composition and technique are both unique in the paintings of this
tomb. We content ourselves with reproducing one main wall, the left
(fig. 14), where a black horse with light grey hoofs, mane, and tail,
is led by a man wearing red boots and a brown mantle lined with green.
He is speaking with one hand raised to a woman in a long grey
chiton, a brown mantle lined with green, and a brown cap. Then comes a
man with green boots leading a brown horse.
[Illustration: FIG. 13. BACK WALL IN THE TOMBA DELLE LEONESSE
After a drawing in the Helbig Museum]
[Illustration: FIG. 14. LEFT MAIN WALL IN THE TOMBA DEL BARONE]
[Sidenote: TOMBA DEL BARONE]
Similar quiet pictures are found on the other two walls of the
tomb; on the back wall a man is standing with his arm round a young
flute-player’s neck, and is greeted by a woman. The dress of the woman
is Etruscan; the subjects also are probably Etruscan—the preparations
for the pompa and the dancing feast. But everything breathes coolness
and calm, and we miss the usual jollity. The technique is equally
remarkable. It is not the usual fresco painting: experiments have been
made with size-paint, that is, an attempt at painting in distemper on
the plaster stucco covering the walls. The attempt has failed; the
colour has run in large blotches.
These two characteristics of the artist of the Tomba del Barone are
of great interest because the German archaeologist, Gustav Körte, has
demonstrated the existence of marks made by Greek artisans on the
walls of this tomb. It was not in Etruscan, but in Greek letters that
the artist indicated the amount of his day’s work, with a view to
his wages. The explanation, then, seems to be the following: a Greek
decorator was charged with the task of ornamenting the walls of the
tomb, and he did it, as far as the dresses are concerned, according
to local tradition; but he experimented boldly with a new technical
process, the success of which was prevented by the dampness of the
rock-wall; and he composed his pictures with a grandeur of line and a
tranquillity in execution which make one think of the pediment of a
Greek temple. In the light of this it is easier to realize how much of
the Etruscan temperament there really is in the other paintings, all
Greek influence on style notwithstanding. It must be noted here that
artisans’ marks are the only written evidence left by the decorative
painters of Etruria; artists’ signatures are unknown, whether in Greek
or in Etruscan. The Etruscan nobles, like the Roman later, evidently
employed Greek artists, but granted them no social position.
VII
[Sidenote: TOMBA DELLE BIGHE]
In the next period the predominant stylistic influence is Attic.
A whole group of tombs dates from about 500 B.C.: they are thus
contemporaneous with the severe red-figured vase-paintings. Very
Attic and, at the same time, like a complete pictorial procession,
representing everything which took place at a great Etruscan funeral,
is the Tomba delle Bighe, previously mentioned and now published by
Weege. As the pictures in this tomb are clearer and more complete than
most Etruscan paintings, we will take some of them as a starting-point
for a closer examination of the facts of Etruscan life.
There are two friezes on the three walls of the tomb: a narrower and
lighter above; and a broader one below, in which the figures are
painted on a deep red ground; the height of the friezes is respectively
36 and 90 cm., and they are separated by a broad, coloured band. The
narrow frieze with the dark figures on light ground still reminds one
of the black-figured Attic vases, whereas the lower purple frieze, in
which the skin of the men is reserved in a somewhat lighter red, that
of the women in white, recalls the red-figured vase-paintings, all
differences notwithstanding.
On the right-hand main wall (fig. 15), in the broad frieze, men and
women are dancing in honour of the dead among laurel branches. There
are the usual ecstasy and the familiar animated gestures with the
big fan-like hands, reminding one of the figures in archaic Greek
vase-painting and plastic art.[30]
[Sidenote: THE TUTULUS—CHARIOT RACE]
Especially splendid is the female flute-player who turns round as she
dances, her light chiton and red cloak fluttering about her; she can
almost compare with ‘la bella ballerina’. The dancing-women all
wear the high Etruscan wreathed cap, the so-called _tutulus_, which in
the Tomba delle Iscrizioni is also worn by a male dancer. We meet with
it again in Etruscan terracotta sculpture. The fashion is of Oriental
origin, and goes back, ultimately, to the pointed ’sugar-loaf hat’ of
the Hittites. It probably reached Etruria by way of Cyprus, where it
is frequently seen in reliefs of the seventh century B. C. In Etruria
the pointed woollen cap became part of the national dress.[31] Rome of
course adopted the headgear and preserved the Etruscan tradition in the
priesthoods; a purple tutulus adorned the Roman Flaminicae, and certain
secondary priests wore a tutulus down to the time of Tertullian.[32]
In early Rome all women wore the tutulus, and under it a head-cloth
such as is shown in Etruscan terracottas (fig. 16); this is clear from
a description of a Roman mourning scene in Dionysius of Halicarnassus
(xi. 39), where the women tear their many and various fillets and
hair-ornaments off their heads.[33]
[Illustration: FIG. 15. RIGHT MAIN WALL IN THE TOMBA DELLE BIGHE]
[Illustration: FIG. 16. ETRUSCAN TERRA-COTTA HEAD IN THE NY CARLSBERG
GLYPTOTEK]
[Illustration: FIG. 17. PART OF THE SMALL FRIEZE IN THE TOMBA DELLE
BIGHE]
The dancing scene, in the painted frieze referred to above (fig. 15),
ends at the sideboard on the left, which bears a number of metal bowls:
a cup-bearer, partially obliterated in the original, is just putting
down a vessel. The wine to inspire the dancers is ready.
In the narrow frieze—the most beautiful and most carefully executed
of those in the tomb, but very badly copied in the facsimile of the
Glyptotek—we see the preparations for a chariot race. The horses
are being led out and harnessed to the chariot. We reproduce, after
Stackelberg’s drawing, the most interesting part of the frieze (fig.
17), in which three young men are busy harnessing two horses to the
light, two-wheeled chariot, the Biga. The chariot is represented in
foreshortening, and the shaft is lifted up by a naked boy. The young
men have each one foot strongly foreshortened.
[Sidenote: TOMBA DELLE BIGHE]
We find here the same experimentation with this new and difficult
problem, as in the Greek vase-paintings of about 500 B. C., in the
vases of Euthymides and Euphronius. The horse to the right is blue,
that to the left grey, both have red hoofs and red harness, and two
youths, with a sort of shawl round their loins, are busily engaged
with them, striking them on the flanks to get them into place. These
two excellent figures are quite misdrawn and misconstrued in the Ny
Carlsberg facsimile, the draughtsman not having realized that they are
seen from behind.
We have, therefore, preparations for a chariot race; in a wall-painting
in the Tomba del Morente at Corneto we have a still earlier phase
represented, the lassoing of the horse which is to be harnessed (fig.
18); here the horse is red, with blue mane and tail. The disposition of
the colours is no more naturalistic in Etruscan wall-painting than in
the pediments of Greek temples: in applying the colours, the painter’s
object was purely decorative.
[Illustration: FIG. 18. WALL-PAINTING FROM THE TOMBA DEL MORENTE
THE LASSOING OF THE HORSE]
[Illustration: FIG. 19. PART OF THE SMALL FRIEZE IN THE TOMBA DELLE
BIGHE
After Arch. Jahrb. 1916]
[Illustration: FIG. 20. PART OF THE TOMBA DELLA SCIMMIA AT CHIUSI]
After the preparations comes the ceremonial parade of the racing
chariots past the stands; three chariots are seen in a row (fig. 15):
the first has not yet begun to move, the horses are pawing the ground
impatiently, and the groom is standing at their heads trying to pacify
them; the second chariot has already started, and the team of the third
chariot is going a little faster, a fine crescendo which reminds one
of good Greek art rather than of Etruscan. To the left are the stands
for the spectators, which are continued on the back wall; similar
stands are seen in the corner where back wall and left main wall
adjoin. We give, after Stackelberg’s drawing, the two parts from the
first-mentioned corner (fig. 19). On elevated platforms, bounded above
by lines evidently meant to indicate curtains which might be drawn
before the ‘box’ against sun or heavy showers, men and women are seated
and show their absorption in the games by their eager gestures. The
foremost woman to the right actually greets the procession of chariots
with her raised hand. She is a matron wearing a shawl (epiblema) over
the arms, and the back of her head, and under that a tutulus. Next
to her sits a young girl with a tutulus, noble in bearing and gesture
like a young goddess. Then follows a varied company of youths, women,
and a bearded man. The young man, who is represented partly frontal
with his chin resting on his hand and the head and left leg frontal,
is of special interest. The problem of foreshortening has been very
neatly solved. Under the wooden floor of the stands the common folk are
disporting themselves, some of them engrossed in anything but the games.
[Sidenote: THE AUDIENCE]
In order to understand the significance of this representation one
has to realize that such detailed pictures of spectators at athletic
games are unknown in Greek art. The nearest parallel is the assembly
of the gods, the Olympian spectators, in the frieze of the Treasury
of the Siphnians at Delphi,[34] and in the Parthenon frieze, between
which the Tomba delle Bighe chronologically occupies an intermediate
position, about twenty-five years later than the former, and about
fifty years earlier than the latter. At the same time we learn that
female spectators were also present; this was not so at the Olympic
games, but seems to have been a common Italic custom. The stands, too,
appear typically Italic; on such ἴκρια the spectators were seated at
those athletic games and contests which in earlier times, according
to Vitruvius (v. 1), were held in the market-places of Italian towns.
Amphitheatres were not known till the first century B.C., but if
one imagines these market-places on festival days with such wooden
stands built up on all four sides, and these stands curved round at
the corners in order that the spectators might see better, one can
understand how the shape of the amphitheatre originated.[35]
[Sidenote: TOMBA DELLA SCIMMIA AT CHIUSI]
Within the sphere of Etruscan painting also, this is the only large
representation of an audience. Elsewhere the artist limited himself to
the individual figure as representative of the spectators; thus in the
Tomba della Scimmia (the Monkey Tomb) at Chiusi, the only spectator is
a lady dressed in black and sheltered by a sunshade; she is seated on
a high chair without a back (diphros), her feet on a footstool (fig.
20). The tomb was discovered in 1846 by François. The pictures are
executed in a thin colour, probably a sort of water-colour, applied
directly to the stone without an intermediate layer of stucco; a
similar technique is employed in the other and larger tomb at Chiusi,
the Tomba Casuccini. The four walls are decorated with scenes from
the race-course and the palaestra. Behind the lady on the wall which
is reproduced, we see two men in rapid motion and with ample gestures
probably intended to render the bustle and hurry at the funeral, which
is also represented, as we have seen, by one of the figures in the
Augur tomb (cp. fig. 4). The sunshade carried by the ‘widow’ was an
Oriental fashion, but in the fifth century B.C. the women of Greece
had adopted it, as is shown by the _Knights_ of Aristophanes (l. 1348
σκιάδειον). To the left the usual flute-player is standing, and the
round dais in front of him is not an altar, but, as Milani was the
first to point out, the small table on which prizes were placed.[36]
Next comes a girl with a censer on her head. She is generally taken
to be a female juggler, but carrying a tall object on one’s head is
still a common practice with the women of the South, and censers
(thymiateria), as we learn from Dionysius of Halicarnassus, were always
carried at the ‘pompae’ in early Rome; at the high festivals they were
placed in front of the Roman doorways.[37] They were sometimes of
costly material.[38] But our woman seems to be standing on a platform,
and the near presence of the flute-player, and the turning of her
body and position of her arms, seem to indicate some difficult dance
performed with the big object borne on her head in a small, limited
space; hence a kind of old Etruscan dervish-dance of which we have no
other knowledge. The two figures next to her are a big and a small
man who are cooling their bleeding noses with sponges: the artist
gives the atmosphere of the scene after the fight. On one of the other
walls in this tomb the boxers are ready for action, raising their
cestus-bound fists against each other, one hand closed for attack,
the other open for defence, as frequently described in the ancient
authors.[39] Cicero tells us that boxers sighed and groaned, in order
to increase the force of the blow.[40] These cestus fights must have
been terrible. The guard, nowadays less, was then more important than
the blow, for it was too dangerous to take the risk of being hit by
one’s opponent when attacking him, even if one was confident that
one’s own blow would be the harder; one had to play for an opening, at
the same time guarding against the single blow which was sufficient
to knock a man out. Finally, on the extreme left of the picture (fig.
20) we meet with a scene which is repeated in another picture in the
same tomb, as well as in the Tomba del Triclinio: a rider seated
sideways and at the same time leading another horse. The race with a
led horse was an Oriental custom, and appears for the first time on the
Phoenician metal bowls of the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. This
seat, sideways on the horse, is of Scythian origin, and in Greek art
usually characterizes the Amazons. The Etruscans, with their passion
for difficult games, evidently combined the two in order to make the
races as exciting as possible.
[Illustration: FIG. 21. PART OF THE SMALL FRIEZE IN THE TOMBA DELLE
BIGHE
After Arch. Jahrb. 1916]
[Illustration: FIG. 22. PART OF THE SMALL FRIEZE IN THE TOMBA DELLE
BIGHE
After Arch. Jahrb. 1916]
[Illustration: FIG. 23. SYMPOSIUM IN THE TOMBA DELLE BIGHE]
[Sidenote: TOMBA DELLE BIGHE]
In the small frieze on the back wall of the Tomba delle Bighe we find
a rider with a led horse, dressed in tunic and helmet, and seated
astride; we reproduce part of it after Stackelberg’s water-colour
(fig. 21). To the left of him we see a naked man standing on one leg
and nursing his raised left leg. It was formerly conjectured that he
was playing leap-frog with the young man planting the jumping-pole in
the ground behind him, but it is not usual to play leap-frog on one
leg, and Weege has pointed out the same position in athletic scenes on
Greek vases and supposes it to be a kind of preparatory exercise. His
supposition is correct: any modern acrobat would recognize it as one
of his exercises; the contraction of the muscles by nursing right and
left knee in turn. Acrobats practise this exercise when travelling, to
keep themselves fit when they are unable to train.
FOOTNOTES:
[30] Cp. Fr. Poulsen, _Delphi_, fig. 44.
[31] Daremberg-Saglio, _s. v._ _Tutulus_. Fr. Poulsen, _Der Orient und
die frühgriech. Kunst_, p. 97, fig. 99, and p. 107. Martha, _L’art
étrusque_, p. 306, fig. 206 (Cyprus). _Antike Denkmäler_ iii, pl. 1.
[32] In the same manner the Roman priests used flint knives in
their cult, and their razors had to be of copper, and, as late as
Roman imperial times, they used black vessels (_nigrum catinum_),
corresponding to the Etruscan bucchero vases, at sacrifices. Livy i.
24. 9: Juvenal vi. 343. Cp. Müller-Deecke, _Die Etrusker_ ii. p. 275.
[33] The Latin name of the head-cloth is _struppus_, and from that a
festival at Falerii, _struppearia_, derived its name. It comes from
Ionia, and is mentioned in the poems of Sappho (χειρόμακτρον).
[34] Fr. Poulsen, _Delphi_, fig. 44.
[35] Cp. Daremberg-Saglio and Pauly-Wissowa, _s. v._ _Amphitheatrum_.
[36] _Museo archeol. di Firenze_, p. 303.
[37] Livy xxix. 14. 13.
[38] Cicero, _In Verrem_ iv. 46. See also Karl Wigand, _Thymiateria_.
[39] For instance in Apollonius Rhodius, _Argonautica_ ii. 68.
[40] Cicero, _Tusculanae disputationes_ ii. 56.
VIII
[Sidenote: PALAESTRA LIFE]
We will not dwell on all the forms of wrestling contests and boxing
matches which appear in the small frieze of the Bighe tomb, but only
describe a part of the left main wall, which presents an important and
difficult problem (fig. 22). To the left of a young man in a himation
(not reproduced) we see the lower part of a statue of a deity, who
would seem, from the faint traces in Stackelberg’s water-colour, to
have wings on his ankles. If so, it is Hermes, the protector of the
palaestra, and the black object in front of him is a small altar. On
the other side of the altar a boy, accompanied by one of the caretakers
of the palaestra, clad in a blue mantle and carrying a knotted stick,
is standing with his hand raised. This usually indicates the adorer
praying to the divinity for victory in the contest. An absolutely
Greek palaestra interior! We have now escaped from the sphere of the
customary rude games held at the Etruscan funerals, and the question
arises whether the Etruscan knew real palaestra life of the Greek
type or not. In the Oscan towns of Lucania and Campania the youths
were devoted to Greek sports, and Weege is therefore inclined, in
view especially of this picture, to believe the same of the nobles of
Etruria at the height of their glory in the sixth and fifth centuries
B.C. But this is a dangerous inference. Wherever else we meet with
Etruscan athletic types they are rough and lumbering of build and
evidently professionals. In the Tomba delle Bighe a Greek artist has
been at work; this was already admitted by Stackelberg and Kestner,
and the same view is held in our own times. Although the artist has
complied with the demands of his patron more fully than the Greek
artist in the Tomba del Barone, who only troubled himself to do so
as far as dress was concerned, but for the rest painted entirely in
the spirit of his native country, Greek influence, nevertheless, has
penetrated everywhere. It is seen, for instance, in the incongruities
of the picture: the spectators in the corners, suggesting actual
athletic games; then this interior from a Greek palaestra, which
_might_ be interpreted, however, as part of a public contest; next
comes the prize table, as in the Tomba della Scimmia, but on both sides
himation-clad boys are seen, loitering like typical figures of the
everyday life of the palaestra, who have absolutely nothing to do with
the concentrated excitement of the sports in the arena. To the left
of the low table we see a little armed dancer, with helmet, shield,
and spear, in Greek nudity, not fully dressed like the gladiator in
the Tomba della Scimmia; his lance is bent zigzag-wise, apparently
an Etruscan peculiarity. With the Greeks also, the armed dance—the
pyrrhiche—formed part of the sepulchral festival, especially in Cyprus
and Crete, where it was called prylis;[41] and the custom may very well
have been adopted by the Etruscans.
FOOTNOTES:
[41] Aristotle, _fragm._ 519 R. Scholia to Homer’s _Iliad_ xxiii. 130.
A similar dancer or armed runner appears in the Tomba Casuccini at
Chiusi; both remind us in posture of the Tübingen armed runner (Bulle,
_Der schöne Mensch_, pl. 89).
IX
[Sidenote: TOMBA DELLE BIGHE SYMPOSIUM]
Similar incongruities, due to Greek artists, or at any rate Greek art,
having set a Greek stamp on the wall-painting of Etruria, meet us in
the representations of _symposia_. Again we can take the Bighe tomb
as our starting-point (fig. 23).[42] Three festive couches are seen
with two young men on each. The youths are naked to the waist, and
have sumptuous gold necklaces, red or blue mantles, and chaplets on
their heads. Some of them hold flat drinking-bowls, some eggs, and
others have branches in their hands—all this, however, we only learn
from the old copies: they are reclining on metal couches, whereas
the tables in front of them are wooden, as is clearly proved by the
colours employed. We may wonder that the couches are of metal, for
according to the literary tradition the first metal couches came to
Rome as late as 187 B.C. Nevertheless, ivory and golden couches are
already mentioned by Plautus; this may, however, be due to the Greek
text on which he based his comedy (_Stichus_ 377). The Etruscans, at
any rate, knew bronze couches at least three hundred years earlier, and
this is corroborated by the find of an actual bronze banqueting-couch
in a tomb at Corneto.[43] The couches are covered with many-coloured
woven or embroidered bolsters and cushions; these also are mentioned in
the Roman comedies as ornaments of couches.[44] Ducks appear beneath
the couches, and the guests are attended by three naked lads: a
flute-player, a boy holding a branch, and another with a ladle, which
are wrongly reproduced in the Ny Carlsberg facsimile as a staff.
The symposium has begun, the tables having been cleared. Only young
beardless men are seen feasting together, and nothing informs us who
they are or why they are drinking. All that is certain is the luxury
and pomp which seem to have characterized Etruscan houses and which
are especially manifest in the jingling necklaces and the material and
appointment of the festive couch.
[Illustration: FIG. 24. BACK WALL IN THE TOMBA DEI LEOPARDI
After Arch. Jahrb. 1916, pl. 9]
[Illustration: FIG. 25. MARRIED COUPLE ON AN ETRUSCAN CINERARY URN]
[Sidenote: TOMBA DEI LEOPARDI—HUNTING LEOPARDS]
New problems arise with the large symposium scene in the Tomba dei
Leopardi at Corneto, which was discovered in 1875 and has now been
described in an exemplary manner by Weege in the article mentioned
above. The pictures are among the best preserved in the whole of
Etruria, and date from about the same time as the Bighe tomb, about 500
B.C. The tomb takes its name from the two almost life-sized leopards
in the pediment (fig. 24). They have been neatly proved by Weege to
be hunting leopards. As early as the days of ancient Egypt leopards
were trained for hunting purposes, and hunting leopards appear in
Greek vase-paintings and Etruscan wall-paintings, for instance, in
the earlier tombs such as the Tomba delle Leonesse and the Tomba del
Triclinio, where the animal lies beneath a couch. In the Middle Ages
the hunting leopard was still trained in the East, and is therefore
depicted in the paintings of the Renaissance—for instance in the
pictures of Gentile da Fabriano and Benozzo Gozzoli—as seated on the
cruppers of the horses behind the Magi or their servants.[45] In modern
India leopards are still trained to hunt.
[Sidenote: TOMBA DEI LEOPARDI]