The Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University presents “From the Temple and the Tomb: Etruscan Treasures from Tuscany,” a comprehensive exhibition of Etruscan art, on view through May 17.
More than 400 objects spanning the Ninth through Second Centuries BC are featured, drawn primarily from the renowned Florence Archaeological Museum, as well as from several smaller Italian museums and private collections. Many of the objects have never before traveled here.
A complementary exhibition, “New Light on the Etruscans: Fifteen Years of Excavation at Poggio Colla,” presents for the first time in North America the findings from an interdisciplinary archaeological research project, the SMU-led excavations at the Etruscan site of Poggio Colla, near Florence, Italy. Nearly 100 objects from the site are displayed, along with new scientific evidence relating to Etruscan daily life and religious rituals.
The Meadows Museum is the exclusive venue for both exhibits.
The Florence Archaeological Museum holds one of the finest collections of Etruscan art in the world, and some of its choicest objects will be shown here, illustrating every aspect of Etruscan life and afterlife over almost 1,000 years. The quality of Etruscan craftsmanship and range of artistic techniques is represented with examples of stone carving, elaborate polychrome terracotta sarcophaguses and funerary urns, sophisticated bronzes, and delicate gold and silver jewelry.
The Etruscans were master metal workers; their skill at creating decorative objects in bronze was much admired by the Greeks, and adapted by the Romans.
The exhibition will include ritual objects, such as votive bronzes offered to the gods in sanctuaries, as well as bronze vases, cooking and serving utensils, perfume flasks, a variety of implements such as strigils (used to wipe off oil or water after bathing), bronze lamp stands and candelabra, and bronze furniture.
Making their US debut are a monumental stone sculpture found in a chamber tomb, the “Mater Matuta,” in which a female figure is depicted sitting upon a throne with a child in her lap; a group of four human figures, about 14 inches tall and dating to around 550 BC, and an entire, 29-foot-long temple pediment from the Second Century BC †the terracotta decoration for the front of an Etruscan temple †showing that the Etruscans were masters at working terracotta as well as bronze.
Numerous objects from Etruscan tombs are also featured, including bronze decorations, ash urns, guardian animals and demons, and stone sarcophaguses with elaborate decorations and figural elements.
“Etruscan art reveals an incredible variety of styles, ranging from naturalistic depictions of humans and animals that foreshadow later Roman portraits to abstracted figures that look so remarkably un-classical they might have been done in the Twentieth Century AD rather than the Sixth Century BC,” said Dr Mark A. Roglán, director of the Meadows Museum.
The exhibition was curated by Dr Giuseppina Carlotta Cianferoni, director of the National Museum of Archaeology in Florence, Italy.
The museum is at 5900 Bishop Boulevard. For information, 214-768-2516 or www.meadowsmuseumdallas.org .
