Word: etruscans
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...rich Etruscan country north of Rome, archaeologists and grave robbers bitterly compete in the search for ancient tombs. But sometimes the grave robber unwittingly becomes the archaeologist's ally. Such a case came to light last week when Rome's Villa Giulia, Italy's main museum of Etruscan artifacts, told the story behind some superb statues it had put on display...
...hill, squeezed through the narrow hole that the robbers had dug, emerged minutes later bursting with excitement. Scattered about inside lay 18 terra cotta figures, each representing a member of a family that had been buried there probably between 200 and 100 B.C. They formed the largest cache of Etruscan funerary statues ever found in such good condition at one time...
...handsome; others, done by less gifted artists, are flat and static. The most unusual figure is of a youth lying on his back. The lines of this statue are softer and more classical than those of the others, but all the statues give new evidence of the closeness of Etruscan to Roman art. Says Professor Mario Moretti, regent of the Villa Giulia: "It's very hard to say at this point where Etruscan art ends and Roman Republican art begins...
...classicist Jacques Louis David. But while David's figures remained solid and heroic, those of Ingres soon became pliant and touched with elegance. David took his inspiration from ancient Rome, and painted frequently from Roman statues. Ingres was struck by the Italian Renaissance primitives, by early Greek and Etruscan art, and above all by Raphael, who so gracefully bridged the worlds of the natural and the ideal. Because of his admiration for the primitives, the Davidians denounced him for returning "to the childhood of nature...
They painted the unfired creations in the Etruscan manner, then broke them into pieces because they did not have the huge kilns that the Etruscans had. After firing the fragments, they smeared them with mud and turned them over to a dealer who is now dead. Fioravanti guesses that one of the figures fetched the dealer at least $40,000, but "all we got," says he ruefully, "was a few hundred...