Continuing through September 20, 2026
Remember when James Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus said that history was the nightmare from which he was trying to awaken? That was over a century ago. Times have changed. Even though the once-idealized future has fallen into disrepair, the archeological and geological past has been making an uncanny return into conversations about contemporary visual culture. Witness the popular success of Christopher Nolan’s cinematic adaptation of Homer’s “Odyssey.” Indeed, as the allegedly new fades out of focus almost as quickly as it bursts forth, the distant past becomes terra incognita ever more ripe for rediscovery and reinterpretation.
That brings us to “The Etruscans,” a blockbuster exhibition organized by Renée Dreyfus. Accompanied by a massive 376-page catalog, it contains over 175 objects, making it the most extensive treatment of Etruscan art and culture to take place in a north American museum since the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened its Etruscan Galleries in 2007. In this show we see ample evidence of highly developed skills in gold, bronze and silversmithing, and proficiencies in many different aspects of ceramic sculpture. We also see just how enigmatic ancient Etruscan art is, partly because we still have so much to learn about it. Many of its records have been lost over the centuries, much of it erased by the Romans who absorbed Etruscan territory into their own growing empire over the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE.
One thing we do not see in this exhibition are weapons (save for one protective breastplate from 650 BCE). Can we imagine visiting a similar exhibition of Greek or Roman artifacts devoid of such military paraphernalia? There is ample evidence here that the Etruscans had trade relations with other Mediterranean cultures, including the Carthaginians, the Hellenistic Greeks, and late-Dynasty Egyptians. Indeed, part of what makes Etruscan art so enigmatic is the fact that it reflects and synthesizes those other influences in so many idiosyncratic ways, grafted onto their own home-grown innovations. One of the many standout objects in the exhibition, the Egyptian “Bocchoris Situla” (c. 700 BCE), a beautifully painted cylindrical container found in an Etruscan tomb, exemplifies this prodigious synthesis.
Other objects look distinctly Etruscan. For example, there are two decorated bronze caldrons, the “Lebes with Snake Pantomes” (7th Century BCE) and the undated “Lebes with Lion Pantomes” from the Vatican Museum. The gold “Syphos” (7th Century BCE) is an eye-popping standout, as is the bronze “Disk with the Head of Acheloos” (5th Century BCE). There is also an ample collection of terra cotta panels that were rescued from the remains of Etruscan temples, many displaying figurative and narrative aspects. A good example is the “Revetment in the shape of a winged horse” (ND), a stylized Pegasus formed of deftly painted terra cotta.
At this juncture, here is some of the historical background. At its peak, Etruscan civilization occupied the western part of the Italian peninsula reaching as far north and east as modern day Pisa, Florence and Perugia, and as far south as Rome. It extends back to about 900 BCE, lasting until about 100 BCE, when it was finally absorbed into the Roman Republic. In fact, before 509 BCE, Rome was under the rule of Etruscan kings who engineered much of the original civil infrastructure in the city of 7 Hills. Their territory was called Etruria, but that might be misleading because of how loosely confederated Etruscan town culture really was. That loose confederation proved to be the undoing of the Etruscans, because the powerful Romans were able pick off individual Etruscan towns one by one over the course of three centuries. But even though the Romans were on the rise, their art absorbed many of its techniques and stylistics from Etruscan sources, proving that even in the ancient world, what goes around comes around.
The Etruscans had elaborate funeral practices. Many of the most intriguing objects in this exhibition are what archeologists call “grave goods,” that is, objects that were buried with the remains of the deceased in clustered underground tombs. In most cases, those remains were cremated, then placed in doll-house sized sarcophagi made of bronze, cut stone or terra cotta, capped with elaborate lids that oftentimes conveyed stories about the deceased. In several examples, reclining figures adorn the lids of these sarcophagi, arranged in what has been termed The Banquet Pose, indicating lives given over to comfort and sybaritic pleasure.
One detail that pops out are the sly, knowing smiles on many of the female figures, contrasting typical depictions of males as being single-minded and oblivious. Can we detect in these female figures the earliest emergence of what some Renaissance historians have called the Peruginian smile, as manifest in the works of Pietro Perugino, his student Raphael Sanzio da Urbino and even Leonardo Da Vinci? Both Perugino and Raphael had roots in the part of Italy that was once called Etruria, meaning that they could have seen Etruscan artifacts in their natural habitats. Certainly, there is no way to confirm or deny this assertion of influence, but it remains one of the many reasons this landmark Etruscan exhibition is such a special event.
