Word: lucanians
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
What English heaths were to Thomas Hardy, the mountains of southern Italy are to Ann Cornelisen. In the isolated villages of the Lucanian Apennines, she has stumbled upon that ominous interaction between dour people and stark environment that comes to be called fate...
...Greek temples of Paestum are surrounded by umbrella pines and artichoke fields, and until recently artichokes were the main preoccupation of Farmer Luigi Franco and his son Francesco. Not any more. Last July Francesco broke a plow on what turned out to be the limestone roof of an ancient Lucanian tomb. Such tombs, decorated with the crude paintings of the local tribesmen who made them, have been found before in southern Italy. But this one was different. When excavated by Archaeologist Mario Napoli, superintendent of antiquities for the district of Salerno, the walls of the tomb were found...
...frescoes are elegant compositions of great vitality in the early classical style. Figures seen in profile are enclosed in lines of exquisite purity, then colored with a few flat shades of red, black, green, yellow ochre and terracotta. Professor Napoli believes Greek artists painted them for their Lucanian overlords, who conquered Paestum around 400 B.C. and then fell under the spell of its culture...
Sestieri pressed on, uncovered about 25 kennel-shaped tombs, each six feet long by a yard wide. Outwardly identical with Greek tombs elsewhere in Paestum, these sepulchers were distinguished by livelier and peculiarly individualistic interior paintings of chariot races, departing warriors, gladiators. Sestieri's conclusion: the conquering Lucanians not only took over the Greeks' city, but pre-empted their tombs as well. Executed by Greek artists under Lucanian orders, the sepulchral paintings, he believes, indicate the existence of a previously unknown style of early Italian...
| 1 |