Etruria Revisited

It is useless to look in Etruscan things for "uplift." If yon want uplift, go to the Greek and the Gothic. If you want mass, go to the Roman. But if you love the odd spontaneous forms . . . go to the Etruscans.

--D. H. Lawrence For centuries the Etruscans have been the shadowy forerunners of the Romans.

Only burial tombs and a few walls remain of their once-sumptuous cities, their ancient Greek script is largely undeciphered, most of their art has been dispersed and lost. But in their heyday, from 700 to 400 B.C., these ancient, vigorous people controlled most of central Italy and the Po River valley and Elba and Corsica.

Their ships and galleys sailed to the far-off Danube, Egypt and Britain.

To re-create the splendor of Etruria, the largest collection of Etruscan art ever assembled was on exhibit last week in Milan's Royal Palace. Sixteen rooms were needed to show 422 pieces dating from the 8th to the ist century B.C. They were drawn from 43 museums and private collections. They fit together into a fresh and fascinating picture of a civilization which, Roman Historian Livy wrote, "filled not only the earth but also the sea for the whole length of Italy, from the Alps to the Straits of Messina."

Behind the Smile. The Etruscans' assurance of life after death, which amused the early Romans, gave Etruscan art one of the sunniest outlooks in history. Early Etruscan warriors were turned out in some of the handsomest armor ever made, and the statues which preserve them for posterity show them wearing an enigmatic antique smile.

This same cheerful camaraderie with life in all its forms, conveyed by exquisitely styled sheep and high-prancing goats, made the Etruscans outstanding animal sculptors as well. To adorn wooden chests they carved gay mermaids, as delightful to Etruscan sailors as the Sirens were terrifying to Greek oarsmen. Even their demons, carved on drinking cups, were closer to Pan than to fire.

Before Surrealism. Occasionally, an Etruscan work seems to leap centuries into the future. Etruscan art, in turn influenced by Greek and Roman art, even went through a surrealist stage. Etruscan artists turned out long, sticklike figurines with just a suggestion of head, breasts, knees and feet. They could pass for the current work of modern Swiss Sculptor Alberto Giacometti.

Terra cotta was the favorite medium of Vulca of Veii, who lived about 500 B.C., the only Etruscan artist whose name has come down. A head of Hermes, perhaps his masterpiece, is so good that classic scholars once thought it must be Greek. But its smiling features, looking out on a benevolent world with a typically Etruscan expression, are alien both to Roman sternness and Greek idealized classicism. More than anything else, it was this carefree attitude toward life as well as death that gave the Etruscan works their unexpected appeal. Rather than visiting a dead civilization, visitors to the show felt that they were meeting a people not unlike modern Italians: gifted, active, and deeply interested in the world around them.

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