Etruscan Tomb Paintings: Their Subjects and Significance

The tombs and tomb-paintings of Etruria constitute a field of archaeology in which the investigator is particularly apt to be reminded of numerous sins of omission and to be haunted by a painfully uneasy conscience. Indeed, the older archaeologists have less reason to plead guilty before the bar of science than those of more recent times. When the discovery and excavation of the Etruscan tombs began to make headway in the twenties of the nineteenth century, publications in text and illustrations followed comparatively close upon the discoveries. The first misfortune, however, took place when three of the most interesting tombs were published, the Tomba delle Bighe, the Tomba delle Iscrizioni, and the Tomba del Barone.

It was the major-domo of the Bishop of Corneto, Vittorio Masi, who first opened them together with other tombs in the vicinity of Corneto. In the spring of 1827 he invited two German barons, Stackelberg, an able archaeologist, and Kestner, the Hanoverian ambassador in Rome, to inspect them, and, if they so desired, to survey, draw, and publish the pictures in the tombs. The two men arrived, accompanied by Thürmer, a Bavarian architect, to find the tombs themselves despoiled of their accessories, but the walls covered with wonderful pictures dating from the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. They set to work immediately, studying and copying the pictures in the richest of the tombs, the Tomba delle Bighe. Stackelberg made five charming water-colours in order to save the colouring for posterity; Thürmer executed eleven careful drawings. In all, the two men painted and drew two hundred and twenty-five figures, and the whole of the material is now preserved in the Archaeological Seminar of the University of Strasburg. In his diary Stackelberg gives a vivid description of the discomfort which they experienced, drawing by torchlight in the cold, dank tomb-chamber, and only emerging now and then into the warm Italian spring sunlight in order to recuperate or to enjoy a light repast on the top of the tumulus, commanding a view of the sea. To this were added fatiguing social duties; local patriotism was aroused in Corneto; the noble families in the town vied in displaying hospitality to the Germans, and big banquets were held, at which sonnets were recited to the ‘heroes’ who once slept in the tombs. The drawing and copying of the colours on the walls in the Tomb of the Chariots, as well as in the Tomb of the Inscriptions and in the Tomb of the Baron—so called after Baron Kestner—were rightly considered the chief matter, because in the very first summer after they were opened, the dampness of the tombs in a few weeks ruined large portions of them, especially in the Tomba delle Bighe. After his return to Rome, Baron Stackelberg caught typhoid fever and did not recover till late in the winter. In the next spring he went to Germany, where his excavations had created such an immense sensation that even the aged Goethe asked Stackelberg to dine with him in Weimar and studied the drawings with the greatest interest. But, in spite of the national enthusiasm called forth by the excavations, the projected great work came to nothing; the coloured plates of the paintings, with the then existing means of reproduction, promised to be so expensive that the publishers took alarm. Pending these negotiations, the paintings from the three tombs were published in French and Italian works in very poor and incorrect reproductions, and no other reproductions were available till 1916, when the German archaeologist, Weege, at last managed to bring out an admirable publication of the Tomba delle Bighe, the most important of the three tombs.

Similar uncoloured, not very reliable drawings continued to be the method of reproducing the Etruscan tomb-paintings in the following decades; after these drawings were made the reproductions in handbooks like Jules Martha’s L’Art étrusque (Paris, 1889). An Englishman, George Dennis, in his Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria (London, 1878), gives a vivid description of Tuscan scenery and of the ancient tombs. At times he rises to a lyrical enthusiasm; for instance, in his description of a dancing figure, ‘la bella ballerina di Corneto’, in the Tomba Francesca Giustiniani. But neither Dennis nor any later visitor procured copies which come up to their enthusiasm; in fact, the beautiful ballerina has never even been drawn or photographed, and is not to be found in any work on archaeology or art. Dennis’s book throws a dreadful light upon contemporary excavation. About Veii, he writes that the greater part of the district belongs to the Queen of Sardinia, who in the excavating season positively lets out tracts of land to Roman dealers, who rifle the tombs of everything convertible into cash and then cover them in with earth. He describes such an excavation at Vulci: a tomb being opened, nothing but pottery was found; the excavators, in their disgust, smashed and destroyed everything, in spite of the English traveller’s protests and entreaties. This took place on the estate of the Princess of Canino.