CHAPTER 25
Etruscan Bodies and Greek Ponderation
Anthropology and Artistic Form

Francesco deAngelis

1. Introduction

Defining the typical (or rather, stereotypical) physical features of the Etruscans has been a source of fascination since antiquity. One only has to think of Catullus’s characterization of the obesus Etruscus (39.11) or of Vergil’s pinguis Tyrrhenus (Georgics 2.193) which have found so much resonance in later ages and that have been used to label monuments such as some sarcophagi bearing figures with plump physical traits on their lids as “dell’Obeso”¹ (Florence, Museo Archeologico Nazionale inv. no. 5482: Herbig 1952: 21–22 no. 21; van der Meer 2004: 120 no. H 21; and Tarquinia, Museo Archeologico Nazionale inv. no. RC 9875, from the Partunus Tomb: Herbig 1952: 56–57 no. 107; van der Meer 2004: 140 no. H 107; see also Liébert 2006: 229–231; Bradley 2011: 25–26). Each era has shaped this interest in the Etruscan body according to its own conceptual categories and ideological biases (see Chapter 22). Even today, the fashionable obsession with DNA analyses in the hope to either shed light on the ancestors of the Etruscans or retrieve their alleged Tuscan descendants (e.g., Vernesi et al. 2004a, b; Belle et al. 2006; Achilli et al. 2007; Guimaraes et al. 2009) has comparable roots (Perkins 2009; Harari 2010; Sineo 2012; and Chapter 13). What links these cases together is the underlying assumption that Etruscan identity is something that can be determined and circumscribed, and that it has a tangible, biological basis in actual corporeality. Underscoring the problematic implications of this kind of endeavor may appear superfluous, especially given how often the risks of biological reductionism and cultural essentialism have been addressed and denounced in scholarship. Yet, since the very popularity of these themes is tightly related to the contemporary circumstances of our own world – in the first place, the profound changes in our understanding of human nature and in our ability to modify it, together with the consequent desire to isolate stable reference points – the possibility of adopting perspectives that are inadvertently conditioned by our own anxieties should not be discounted lightheartedly.

Fortunately, science itself provides antidotes against its abuses. The analysis of the skeletal remains contained in the terracotta sarcophagus of the Chiusine woman, Seianti Hanunia, now in the British Museum, has allowed scholars to “recover” her facial features and compare them to a visual image (Swaddling and Prag 2002). A comparison between the face of the old woman as reconstructed by the scientists and the sarcophagus portrait confirms the idealizing character of the latter. Needless to say, the natural sciences, despite their strong and sometimes essential contributions, are by no means the only available tool in this context. The constructed nature of visual representations of facial features and body types can be effectively gleaned through art historical analysis alone (nor should one forget that even the “real” face of Seianti Hanunia is, itself, the product of art – that branch of portraiture that is based on forensic techniques). Indeed, art historians have argued along these lines on many occasions. For example, the “artificiality” of obese bodies, such as those that typically occur on the Hellenistic funerary monuments from Chiusi (de Angelis 2015a) (Figure 22.4), becomes apparent when we contrast them with the earlier images of the so-called cinerary-statues, which come from the same area and belong to the same category of sepulchral art (Cristofani 1975). The plump features of the Chiusians on the third-century sarcophagi and urns do not occur on the monuments of their fellow citizens (and ancestors) of the fifth and fourth centuries, who, on the contrary, display well-trained torsos and idealized faces.

This shift is hardly the product of substantial changes in the physical appearances of the people of Chiusi. Quite remarkably, the faces and bodies within each group resemble each other much more than they do counterparts in the other group. As first suggested by Paul Zanker (1995: 136 and n. 52), and then extensively argued by Massimiliano Papini (2004: 319–28), the chubby faces and the round bellies found on the Hellenistic monuments were inspired by the royal portraiture of the Ptolemies. They represent a transposition and adaptation of the Greek ideals of tryphé and opulence into the Etruscan context. Likewise, the earlier funerary images of the Chiusians are heavily indebted to Classical Greek forms and ideals, as has been demonstrated by Mauro Cristofani (1975), Tobias Dohrn (1982: 49–50), and Adriano Maggiani (1993). The overall shapes of the faces, with their oval contours, regular profiles, broad surfaces, sharp horizontal eyebrows, and fleshy lips, closely resemble the features found in Greek sculpture from the fifth century. Even the arrangement and texture of the locks of hair presuppose “Polykleitan” formulae as they survive in Roman copies. In both cases, then, formal analysis reminds us that represented bodies, be they realistic or idealized in style, are, first and foremost, constructs that vary according to cultural conventions and assumptions rather than biological factors. With respect to portraiture, the desire to take advantage of the formal solutions invented in Greece prevailed over any other considerations.

Originality vs. Derivation

While an art historical approach based on stylistic and formal analysis can effectively help scholars avoid the pitfalls of biological determinism when talking about Etruscan bodies, the situation is less clear-cut when it comes to cultural essentialism. The way in which the issue of identity has most often been conceptualized in discussions about the relationship of Etruscan art to Greek art reminds us that art historians can be just as prone to stereotypes as anyone else. The conceptual couple of “originality vs. derivation” is particularly insidious in this respect: while it represents a useful heuristic tool if used judiciously, it nevertheless risks becoming an end in itself – even today.

There is no doubt, for example, that artifacts like the canopic urns from Chiusi (Gempeler 1973; Cristofani 1978: 123–27; Minetti 2004; Paolucci 2010) express a conception of the body that cannot be directly related to anything known from Greece. Their “bodies,” which are, in fact, the containers of the ashes of the deceased (with the heads functioning as the lids), never conceal their nature as vessels, despite the addition of anthropomorphizing elements. The heads – both the highly schematized and cork-like ones on the earliest examples, and the more naturalistic types of later decades – follow their own conventions and develop largely according to criteria internal to the genre: it would, in fact, be difficult to trace stylistic connections to other artistic traditions. These images are truly Etruscan, or, more accurately, Chiusine inventions. At the other end of the chronological spectrum, the over-elongated bronze statuettes from Hellenistic Volterra, including the famous Ombra della Sera (Cristofani 1985a: 275 no. 75; M. Bonamici in Maggiani 1985b: 158, 163–65 nos. 218–19; Cateni 1999), presuppose aesthetic ideals that also cannot be found anywhere else in the coeval Mediterranean world. Even though isolated details such as the arrangement of the hair have parallels in Greek art (and can be used to date the statuettes), the overall result is so peculiar that it is difficult to consider them as just a variant of a more widespread visual koine.

It would be misleading, however, to accord privileged status to these particular examples, or to argue that their undisputable originality and uniqueness make them more “authentic” than other manifestations of Etruscan concepts about the body. The style of the vast majority of Etruscan representations of human figures manifests clear responses – very often imitative ones – to stimuli coming from Greek art. There is little doubt that these stimuli were the objects of creative engagement in Etruria, as a well-known statue such as the Aplu of Veii easily shows. The days are long gone when the Aplu was understood as a paradigmatic example of “Etruscan-ness.” Following Massimo Pallottino’s (1945) seminal analysis, scholars tend to stress the unique quality of its workmanship (e.g., Cristofani 1978: 100–102; Torelli 1985: 97–102; Colonna 2008: 59–62) rather than the peculiarly Etruscan nature of its forms (as did Kaschnitz Weinberg 1933; but see also Brendel 1978: 238–44). The emphasis, however, still lies on the transformative process. This is to say that to a certain extent the Greek component has been taken for granted: stylistic parallels have been used mostly to trace artistic “influences” and assess chronologies, but have not been subjected to a systematic critical discussion. Instead, the abundance of Greek comparanda for almost all aspects of the god’s body begs for an extensive explanation. On a general level, the anthropomorphic rendering of divinities in Etruria, whose theological system does not seem a priori to require it, is a far from obvious phenomenon that still awaits an articulated and comprehensive investigation (Cristofani 1993, 1997; Maggiani 2012; Krauskopf 2013: 517–520).

The underlying problem, therefore, is not that the canopic urns or the elongated bronze statuettes are representative in only a limited way of Etruscan tendencies concerning bodily ideals. More fundamentally, it is the “originality vs. derivation” dichotomy that risks polarizing the perspective in a way that does not help to formulate productive questions, let alone provide answers to them. The emphasis on this conceptual binary is, at least in part, the consequence of a traditional art historical approach (see Chapter 24). To counter such risks, it may be worthwhile to take on the challenge issued by many scholars who, in recent years, have advocated going beyond art history in the direction of a more comprehensive science of images (a Bildwissenschaft) and/or an anthropology of art. For the purposes of this chapter, it is particularly significant that the human body, as both an object and a medium of aesthetic experience, plays a key role in many of these new scholarly trends. This focus has been fruitful in several ways: among other things, it has led scholars to revive former approaches and theories, from empathy studies and Warburg’s Pathosformeln to Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, and to revisit them in the light of the new insights brought about by fields such as the neurosciences.

The perspectives advocated by these approaches are not only quite diverse but also even divergent from each other. It makes little sense to harmonize them at all costs, let alone subscribe to all their points. Moreover, the adoption of a broader anthropological perspective does not require that art historical phenomena such as form and style be marginalized. On the contrary, they should be firmly placed at the very core of these endeavors. Despite what some of its proponents seem to imply, an anthropology of art does not stand in opposition to art history, and, in any case, does not require relegating traditional methods to the storeroom of out-of-fashion tools, provided we properly redefine them. The point, in other words, is not to deny the aesthetic dimension of art, but to assess its Sitz im Leben, its “setting-in-life,” for a culture as distant and alien to ours as the Etruscans’.

2. Ponderation

The heuristic potential of an anthropological approach of this kind can be made evident through the examination of a paradigmatic formal phenomenon, ponderation, and its representation in Etruscan art from the Classical and Hellenistic periods. Ponderation – the distribution of the body weight on the legs and the series of reactions and movements that it provokes in the rest of the limbs – is particularly apposite for such an investigation not simply for its intrinsic significance, but also because it is a motif that mediates between iconography and style. In particular, it makes it possible to focus on the expressive dimension of iconography, which is crucial for an anthropological understanding of art.

The relevance of ponderation to the history of ancient art is beyond dispute. In fact, the distinction between the supporting and relaxed legs that causes the inclination of the hip axis and the curvature of the linea alba is perhaps the single most significant marker of the passage from the Archaic to the Classical period in Greek art (Borbein 1989; Hölscher 1997: 239–241; see also Fehr 1979). The use of ponderation brought the series of the kouroi to an end and gave way to a new typology for standing statues. The dynamic potential inherent within the human body was no longer suggested by features like the different positioning of the feet – one advanced and the other postponed – but by the whole body’s reaction to the force of gravity. Because of ponderation, even figures that stood still, without movement, did not appear static. The change was apparently a slight one, but it had momentous consequences on the visual power of human representations, as a comparison between the late kouros depicting Aristodikos (Karouzos 1961) and an early statue in the new style such as the so-called Kritios Boy (Fehr 1979: 25–30; Hurwit 1989) easily demonstrates. The subtle deviation from strict symmetry in the latter’s left and right parts of the body gives him a pervasive vibrancy that is fundamentally different from the powerful but more rigid manifestation of self-controlled energy in the statue of Aristodikos.

Just as remarkable are the conceptual and artistic presuppositions of its invention. Ponderation was connected to a strong interest in the internal working of the human body and in the dynamic aspects of its anatomy. Even though the specific nature of the link between sculpture and coeval developments in medical research is the subject of scholarly debate, ponderation offers testimony to the clinical eye with which artists observed the human body and how they paid attention not only to its outer appearance but also to its underlying causes (Leftwich 1995; Métraux 1995; Demand 2001; Neer 2010: 143–55). The variety of situations that Greek artists envisaged for ponderation within a relatively restricted time span suggests the intensity of their interest in this motif (Borbein 1997: 1293–1301), from the poised and seductive elegance of the Motya charioteer (Rolley 1994: 389–391; Pavese 1996; Denti 1997; Neer 2010: 143–45) to the impaired movements of the wounded Amazons of Ephesos (Bol 1995).

As is well-known, ponderation achieved its – literally – canonical version thanks to Polykleitos, who synthetized his vision of it in the famous chiastic construction (the contrapposto) of the Doryphoros (see Beck et al. 1990, especially Berger 1990 and von Steuben 1990; Moon 1995, especially Tobin 1995; Borbein 1996, 1997: 1293–1298; Hölscher 1997: 246–48). Polykleitos investigated and visualized the consequences of the movement of the legs in every single part of the body through a complex play of reactions and counter-reactions. Thus, in the Doryphoros, the deviation of the line of the hips from horizontality triggers a similar, but opposite, deviation of the shoulders; and the head looks slightly down in the direction of the supporting leg. Tense limbs and relaxed ones are set in a cross relationship to each other: the supporting right leg finds correspondence in the left arm that holds the spear; similarly, the left leg, with its raised heel, is relaxed just as the right arm is. At the same time, both left limbs of the Doryphoros are flexed, whereas the right ones are straightened. Polykleitos’s quest for a pervasive balance of movements was combined with the establishment of a rigorous system of ideal proportions that determined the dimensions of each of the body parts – a system that the artist had put down in writing in his treatise, the Canon, which was also the name given to the statue (Philipp 1990; Borbein 1994; Pollitt 1995).

3. The Reception of Ponderation in Etruria

Scholarship has characteristically phrased the issue of the reception of ponderation in Etruria as a study of the echoes of Polykleitos and other Greek artists in Etruscan art. This research, conducted especially by Tobias Dohrn (1982: 27–34) and János Gjörgy Szilágyi (1993), has brought together a corpus of works mainly consisting of small-scale decorative bronze statuettes as well as votive images. For the most part, these artifacts are characterized by the shift of the hips corresponding to the distinction between supporting and relaxed leg, and by the converging lines of hips and shoulders. As both Dohrn and Szylágyi have remarked, however, these are all partial imitations of Polykleitos’s model: we never find a systematic and organic adoption of the Greek artist’s principles, some of which are only seldom attested in Etruria. For example, we positively know of only few instances of the motif of the raised heel (uno crure insistere, as Pliny the Elder describes it: Natural History 34.56), e.g., the statuette of a discus-bearer, now in Basel (Dohrn 1982: 30–31 no. 8, pl. 13). The body axis of this figure, however, is inclined in a way that would not warrant balance and stability if transposed into reality, thereby going against Classical ideals.

The question is whether this piecemeal adoption of Polykleitan elements is really surprising –or disappointing, for that matter. The problem depends, in the first place, on the use of an art historical approach that focuses on the individual personalities of great masters. Such an approach, while far from inadequate for understanding certain aspects of Greek art (since ultimately it has its roots in the self-perception of the Greek artists themselves (Settis 1993; Tanner 2006; de Angelis 2015b)), is of limited value when employed as a comprehensive hermeneutic paradigm for most artistic cultures of antiquity – including the Greek one. The Etruscan sculptors and painters, whose professional self-consciousness and socio-cultural status only partially coincided with that of their Greek colleagues (Colonna 1975; Pfiffig 1976; Maggiani 1985a; Colonna 1993; Poccetti 2009; Colonna 2014; for Greece, see Coarelli 1980), did not aim to reproduce the characters of single personalities (e.g., Polykleitos, Pheidias, etc.) as such, nor were they particularly interested in the overall coherence and unity of the output of any Greek artists. Instead, the work of their colleagues must have been largely anonymous for them – they must have used it as a repertoire of available artifacts and formal options rather than considering it the sum of contributions and solutions invented by distinct famous individuals.

The Adoption of Classical Style in Etruria

Regardless of the issue of the great masters, the way in which scholars have conceptualized the reception of Classical art in Etruria has played a crucial role in predetermining the answers in a more general sense. The two main factors that have repeatedly attracted attention in this respect are the time lag with which the Etruscans adopted elements of Classical art and reacted to them, and the lack of organicity inherent within Etruscan works of art. The first factor – retardation (Retardierung: see Die Aufnahme 1981) – has been linked to the political and economic crisis experienced by Etruria, especially by its southern coastal cities, in the wake of its defeat in the naval battle against the Cumaeans and the Syracusans in 474 BCE. Even though both the chronological extent and the specific dynamics of this time lag have been debated, consensus remains about its existence during the decades around the mid-fifth century, i.e., the periods of the Severe and High Classical styles in Greece. As for the allegedly missing organicity of Etruscan art in comparison with its Greek sources of inspiration, this view has been mainly understood in terms of cultural difference and specificity – most famously by Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli (1942) – as an expression of the anti-classical attitude of the Etruscans (see Papini 2002). In his book on the “Interim age,” Tobias Dohrn (1982) combined both factors in a single explanation, arguing that the interruption of direct contacts with mainland Greece caused by the post–474 crisis allowed Etruscan artists to let their deep nature, their “true” self, emerge relatively unhindered by Classical Greek influences, and to give way to their inborn tendencies toward expressivity and decorativism. Even though the scholarly roots of Dohrn’s ideas, which lie in Guido Kaschnitz von Weinberg’s Strukturforschung and share its problematic assumptions about artistic ethnicity (Brendel 1979: 108–21; Wimmer 1997), make it difficult to maintain his point of view unaltered, his explanatory model has not yet been replaced with a fundamentally different one.

The point here is not to avoid any pejorative implications of the acknowledgement that the Etruscans adopted and adapted Classical Greek art only in a partial way: most of the studies of this phenomenon are anyway keen to provide a decidedly positive evaluation of the Etruscans’ achievements. The problem lies in the conceptual constellation they use, which is basically unchanged in all cases and, as mentioned above, does not allow one to escape from a dichotomic vision (Classical vs. anti-Classical; organic vs. non-organic; meaningful vs. decorative; and of course, original vs. derivative). By focusing on the specific Etruscan contribution, this vision takes the Greek components for granted, as if the fact that they were adopted were the norm, an obvious phenomenon, and that what requires explanation – or, what is interesting – were only the changes they underwent. Ultimately, such a vision is pervaded by a classicizing attitude equal to the approaches that condemned Etruscan art on the account of its divergences from the Greek models. It implies that the spread of Greek art beyond its original boundaries is something natural, even inevitable (compare Chapter 7 on the “Classicistic” bias).

Instead, we should start with the assumption that intercultural transmission is always partial and circumscribed. If we insist on understanding acculturation as a totalizing and overarching phenomenon, we will never find it instantiated in reality (Flaig 1999). This is also true for cultures like that of the Romans, where the desire to imitate and replicate Greek prototypes was much more pronounced and produced properly classicizing trends; and it is all the more true for the Etruscans, whose attitude towards Greek art provides us with the unique opportunity to assess the impact of Classical art in absence of any classicizing ideologies. In other words, if we want to understand Etruscan art – and Etruscan notions of the body – we should not simply pay attention to their differences from the Greeks, but rather, and perhaps especially, to those elements in them that we recognize as “Greek.” What made these motifs so distinctively Greek and, at the same time, so easily translatable into other visual cultures?

With respect to ponderation, the implicit expectation of a thorough, organic adoption of Greek formal features leads us to disregard the much more interesting phenomenon that Etruscan artists not only took over this motif (along with some types of contrapposto stances), but also used it extensively and engaged intensively with it. Indeed, ponderation appears in decorative and votive sculpture of small and medium size, as well as in life-size statues (e.g., the so-called “Mars” from Todi: Roncalli 1973) and in architectural sculpture (e.g., the torso of a young man from the temple of Via S. Leonardo in Orvieto: Sprenger and Bartoloni 1977: 139 no. 194). Moreover, it was used in several different ways that vary with the passing of time, following the developments of both Greek and Etruscan art. For example, votive statuettes of the Hellenistic age (e.g., Haynes 1985: 321 no. 197; or De Puma 2013: 235 no. 6.79) employ ponderation in combination with an accentuated rotation of the body and more broadly-spaced legs, creating an elastic movement that shows awareness of late Classical and early Hellenistic inventions.

The sustained popularity of ponderation in Etruria is remarkable and requires an explanation, since its invention in Greece was the outcome of specific historical, cultural, and artistic circumstances. Tonio Hölscher (1997: 239–248) has connected it with the Greek experience of the Persian Wars and the new sense of the self that it triggered: according to him, the attentive analysis of the potentialities as well as of the limits of human action is an interest that sculptors and painters shared with other cultural actors of this age, such as philosophers and tragedians. As illuminating as explanations such as this one may be, the prolonged life of ponderation throughout antiquity, along with its diffusion in very different cultural contexts, suggests that much more is at stake. In other words, attention should shift from production to reception. This shift does not imply that the circumstances under which the motif was originally conceived lose their importance. Rather, they get relativized – in a quite literal (and positive) sense: that is, they are put in relationship to subsequent historical developments and thereby acquire sharper contours. Thus, the history of reception is useful precisely because – and insofar as – it sheds light on the beginnings of ponderation as well as on its use in the later periods.

4. Ponderation in the François Tomb

The François Tomb in Vulci provides a paradigmatic confirmation of this perspective. As is well-known, two remarkable scenes stand out among its many frescoes: one represents Achilles sacrificing the Trojan prisoners, and the other depicts Avle Vipinas with his comrades killing a group of adversaries that have captured Avle’s brother Caile Vipinas. These scenes unfold along the two long walls of the tomb’s so-called “tablinum” and continue around the edges on the two sides of the back wall flanking the door that leads to the rear chamber. The latter portions of both scenes are apparently marginal (Figure 25.1). In fact, given their position inside the tomb, closest to its main axis and directly facing the entrance, they are among the first images that a visitor would see upon entering the space. Their mutual connection is underscored by the single nude figure that dominates each of them – respectively, a Trojan prisoner and Caile Vipinas – and especially by the two shields that are represented close to the tomb’s door. Since both shields are only half visible, as if they were interrupted by the door itself, the viewer is almost invited to integrate each half with the corresponding one on the other side. Scholars have used this pendant composition as a key for interpreting the tomb’s iconography (Harari 2007; Menichetti 2014). The thematic analogy as well as the contrast between the Trojan prisoner, who is led to death with his hands tied on his back, and Caile Vipinas, who is about to be freed from captivity and whose hands are being unbound by his loyal companion Macstrna, is undeniable. What has gone unremarked so far, however, is that this contrast also finds expression in the body postures of the two characters.

Image described by caption and surrounding text. — **Figure 25.1** A Trojan prisoner and Caile Vipinas on the back wall of the François Tomb, 340–310 BCE. Fresco. From Vulci. Tempera painting by Carlo Ruspi. Drawing: Andreae et al. 2004, fig. 8.

The Trojan captive walks with an unsteady gait: his thighs have been deliberately mutilated and blood drips conspicuously down from his wounds. As a consequence, both of his knees are slightly bent. Similarly, the inclination of the Trojan’s head appears to be caused by Ajax Oileus who pulls at his hair. Everything in this figure speaks of impaired movement, diminished energy, and lack of control over the body. On the other side of the door, the opposite situation appears. The imprisonment of Caile Vipinas is about to end and the hero will recover his freedom of movement in a few seconds. It is not by chance, then, that Caile’s body is characterized by an elegantly ponderated stance. Thanks to its connotation of dynamic corporeal autonomy, this posture is an ideal fit for the detailed rendering of Caile’s anatomy, and, especially, the muscles of his torso and limbs, which are highlighted by a skillful use of chiaroscuro and white heightening. Even more remarkable is the way in which the Etruscan painter takes advantage of the character of ponderation as a posture that occupies a middle ground between standing and walking, just as Polykleitos did in the Doryphoros. This motif, which is further underscored by the elasticity of Caile’s feet (they are set wider apart than usual), is particularly well-suited to capturing the transitional state, between captivity and freedom, of Caile himself: it is ponderation, above all, that lends his body a unique vibrancy that stands in marked contrast with the awkwardness of movement of the Trojan prisoner and most effectively incarnates the divergent destinies of the two characters. Thus, these images in the François Tomb provide a visual commentary on ponderation that illustrates both the Greek and the Etruscan sides of the phenomenon. In the painting of Caile, the artist took advantage of the dynamic potential that was intrinsic to the motif since its beginnings in the early Classical period and used it to confer visual meaning to an Etruscan legend by contrasting it with a representation of impaired movement in a Greek mythological scene that bears typical Etruscan traits, such as the Trojan prisoner’s bleeding thighs.

5. Ponderation in Etruscan Bidimensional Art from the Late Classical Period

The François Tomb contains a particularly eloquent example of the use of ponderation in Etruscan art, but it is by no means the only one. A comprehensive overview would go beyond the scope of this chapter. Instead, it is more productive to focus on one particular version of the phenomenon – one whose relationship to Greek Classical art is especially intense. I am referring to those instances that occur in bidimensional art where ponderation, not necessarily in its contrapposto version, is attributed to bodies that are visualized in full frontality, but in combination with a head shown in the profile. This is an iconographic scheme that we can legitimately dub as “Classical.” It first surfaces in the early Classical period in Greece, as manifested by the representation of Herakles on the krater of the Niobid Painter from Volsinii, (Orvieto) today in the Louvre (Beazley 1963: 601,22; Arias and Hirmer 1962: 355–356, fig. 173), where the hero is surrounded by comrades and looks towards Athena. In the Periklean age, it becomes a distinctive feature of artists such as the Achilles Painter: for example, on his namesake vase from Vulci (Beazley 1963: 987,1; Arias and Hirmer 1962: 364, fig. 188), it is used for Achilles who stands quietly with one hand on his hip while resting on his spear; on his white-ground lekythoi, it appears in the poses of the deceased men positioned near their tomb or interacting with their relatives (e.g., Beazley 1963: 1000,21). The combination of calmness and energy in this formula seems to have been particularly appealing in a funerary context. It enjoyed considerable popularity in the early production of Attic sepulchral monuments (that is, in the last third of the fifth century) – such as on the famous “Cat Stele” from Salamis, an almost archetypical incarnation of the High Classical style (Clairmont 1993: no. 1.550; Neer 2010: 200–204, pl. 10).

Quite interestingly, this scheme is maintained and used in Etruria long after the end of the High Classical period, including on several mirrors from the fourth century. On an example from Caere, now in the British Museum (inv. no. 627: ES 4.398; van der Meer 1995: 109–11; de Angelis 2002: 69 and n. 78; de Grummond 2006: 93), where Menle/Menelaos is threatening to kill his wife Elinei/Helen after the fall of Troy but is restrained by Thethis/Thetis and Turan/Aphrodite (Figure 25.2), this version of ponderation appears in the figure of Aivas/Ajax. The hero is shown in full nudity, only wearing a mantle and bearing a shield and a spear in the left hand, while quietly observing the drama that unfolds on the left together with Phulphsna/Polyxena (but one wonders whether the engraver meant to refer to Cassandra). On the famous mirror from Tuscania with the haruspical inspection of the liver by Pava Tarchies (Figure 7.4), the god (or hero?) Veltune is represented in the same way (Florence, Museo Archeologico Nazionale inv, no. 777759: Cristofani 1985b and 1987; Torelli 1988; Domenici 2009: 98–101, 107 [Tages 1]; Harari 2009). In this case, however, the general tone of the scene is much more calm and static. Perhaps, most famously, Hercle/Herakles is similarly rendered in the upper register of the mirror from Vulci (Figure 25.3), now in the Cabinet des Médailles in Paris, where the hero presents the winged infant Epiur to Tinia/Zeus in the presence of the two goddesses Turan and Thalna (inv. no. 1287: ES 2.181; Rebuffat-Emmanuel 1973: 51–64 no. 5; van der Meer 1995: 93–97; de Angelis 2002: 64–5 and n. 74; de Grummond 2006: 15, 61–3; Domenici 2009: 197–228, 229 (Epiur 1)). Hercle’s posture is not simply characterized by ponderation, but also has some significant contrapposto features, namely, the divergence of the axes of hips and shoulders, and the turn of the head in the direction of the supporting leg (it is not a full “Polykleitan” contrapposto, however, since both of his feet are planted on the ground and the left arm that should be hanging in a relaxed attitude carries Epiur instead).

In addition to its use in mirror engravings, this formula appears in tomb paintings from the fourth century. On a wall of the Tomb of the Orcus in Tarquinia, for example, the three-headed monster Cerun/Geryon stands facing Aita/Hades and Phersipnei/Persephone in this posture (Steingräber 1985: 337–340 nos. 93–95, fig. 129; 2006: 207–210, fig. p. 199). Additional figures in the François Tomb employ it as well: both the Greater and the Lesser Aivas, each of whom holds a Trojan prisoner, are represented in this way (Steingräber 1985: fig. 183; Andreae et al. 2002: 192–193). The same probably applied to Achmemrun/Agamemnon, even though the loss of the inferior part of this figure prevents certainty in this case.

How should the occurrences of this formula of early Classical origins on fourth-century Etruscan art objects, which, in most cases are of the highest quality, be conceptualized? As argued above, retardation is not a viable option. But speaking of conservatism or of “classicizing” formal trends would hardly be a satisfying explanation either, not only because the reception of Classical Greek art in Etruria lacks a systematic character, but also because the formula is employed in combination with others that have more recent stylistic origins.

A more suitable hermeneutic model appears to be the one developed for Roman art by Tonio Hölscher (1987) who argued that Greek historical styles, themes, and motifs received distinctive semantic charges in Roman times and were employed (and combined) accordingly to convey specific meanings and connotations by Roman artists. Thus, for example, on the Ara Pacis panel with the sacrifice of the Lavinian sow, Aeneas exudes classical dignitas and gravitas through the use of the iconographic formula also seen on the Etruscan mirrors and paintings discussed above. By contrast, the lower status of the attendant that leads the victim is indicated by, among other things, the use of Hellenistic realism for his features.

Despite the issues raised by a semiological approach to ancient art (on which, see below), Hölscher’s attempt is especially useful because it leads us to consider the actual interaction of different stylemes, motifs, and types rather than (just) their origins. Most crucially, it invites us to focus on the expressive dimension of iconography, which is crucial for an anthropological understanding of the role of the body in ancient art, as recent work on the Greek notion of schema has confirmed (see Catoni 2004). In the case of the classical formula of ponderation, it is significant that it is prevailingly used for warriors and characters that carry or hold weapons of some kind. This circumstance suggests the artists’ desire to emphasize the physical prowess of the represented figures: not coincidentally are muscles often articulated with a wealth of detail, as can be seen in Aivas and Hercle on the two mirrors discussed above (see Figures 25.2 and 25.3) – and as it already occurs on the Niobid krater, where Herakles’s excessive force is suggested by the unrealistic multiplication of his abdominal partitions (eight instead of six). The energy and vitality of ponderation as well as the self-control that it implies are thus almost emblematically offered to the gaze of the viewer thanks to the figures’ frontal view. Similarly, the twist that brings the head into full profile, although it is not determined by a sudden movement (the figures are usually in calm situations), suggests, in its thoroughness, vigor and determination: there is no three-quarter “compromise.”

This does not mean that the formula has one invariable and precisely circumscribed semantic charge, a denotative “meaning,” as it were. The role that this version of ponderation plays in each case was co-determined by its context (nor should we overlook the fact that its pertinent traits may be segmented and perceived differently according to circumstances). For example, on a mirror now in the collection of the Duke of Northampton (Figure 25.4), the same iconographic scheme is used for the softest of heroes, Atunis/Adonis (or possibly Paris, but this would not substantially alter the terms of the issue), who huddles against Turan (Northampton, Castle Ashby, from Bomarzo: ES 1.112; van der Meer 1995: 20–22 nos. 12, 26; de Angelis 2002, 53–56; Izzet 2005). The frontal display of Atunis’s nudity underscores the beauty of his body. Similarly, the rendering of his head in profile is adapted to the depiction of kissing. In other words, the formula is used here to celebrate the erotic attractiveness of the youthful male body. In this context, ponderation does not underscore the autonomous dynamics of the body but acquires rather languorous connotations. At the same time, it is significant that the engraver did not choose to emphasize Atunis’s abandonment beyond a certain point, for example, by imitating postures of fourth-century Greek figures such as Praxiteles’s Apollo Sauroktonos or Skopas’s Pothos, the inclination of whose bodies requires an external support, and whose poses are often echoed on contemporary Etruscan mirrors. Even though the sinuosity of Atunis’s torso is carried further than in any of the examples mentioned above, his body is not off balance. For all its adaptability, the iconographic formula also had a steadiness – a certain resilience, as it were – that allowed artisans to employ it as such and viewers to recognize it. This is all the more plausible in Etruria since the erotic connotations of the ponderated stance were being explored in other contexts as well. This can be seen, for example, by the representation of a beautiful nude young servant in the Tomb of the Orcus in Tarquinia, whose ideal body and elegant stance are, not coincidentally, juxtaposed and contrasted with the plump one of the nearby Silenus-shaped vase stand (Steingräber 1985: fig. 132).

The connotations of the formula, therefore, are made especially evident, and in part even generated, by the contexts in which it occurs. In this respect, it is helpful to compare scenes where the formula is used for a particular character and other instances where the same character is represented in a different posture. A good example is provided by a second mirror depicting Hercle holding Epiur in his hand (Figure 25.5), today in Berlin (Staatliche Museen inv. no. Fr 136: ES 2.165; Domenici 2009 (Epiur 2)). In this case the hero presents the child to Menerva instead of Tinia (and the attendant characters are Turan and Munthu instead of Turan and Thalna). For our purposes, the interesting difference is that Hercle’s body is shown in three-quarter view instead of full frontality. Moreover, his thighs appear closer to each other, giving him an air of greater ease. While these distinctions are not exceedingly different from the hero’s appearance on the first Epiur mirror, they are useful because they draw attention to the fact that engravers could, and indeed did, choose between alternative options, depending on the circumstances. Indeed, the relevance of these alternatives becomes even more evident when we examine the first Epiur mirror as a whole (see Figure 25.3). The posture of Hercle in the upper register stands in marked contrast to that of Elchsntre/Paris in the lower one. The latter hero, not by chance a protegé of Turan, is represented in a pose – with one foot placed in front of the other – that became popular in Greek art in the fourth century and is the quintessential embodiment of an unstable, almost dancing, interpretation of ponderation. The virtuosity of this scheme is increased by the view from the back, and is mirrored by Mean, the eroticized personification of success, who crowns him. This suggests that the choice of a particularly “Classical” formula for Hercle on the upper register depends on the desire to differentiate him as much as possible from the figure of Paris, whereas such a need is less present on the second Epiur mirror, where the hero is only surrounded by female figures.

The situation is even more explicit in the case of Aivas, who displays contrasting body types on the Elinei and the first Epiur mirrors (see Figures 25.2 and 25.3). When he is juxtaposed to the drama of Menle and Elinei on the example in the British Museum, Aivas has a very different body than when represented in the realm of Turan in the lower register of the mirror in the Cabinet des Médailles. There, his twisted posture and gesture of surprise (or dismay?) at the crowning of Elchsntre by Mean has little in common with the dignified tranquility with which the hero observes Menle’s aggression or even with the general characterization of the hero in Greek art (for which, see Kahil 1997; Krauskopf 1997). Here, too, contextual elements play a crucial role. In particular, on the mirror showing the aggression toward Elinei, Aivas’s body is part of a broader visual dialogue that includes both male and female interlocutors. On the one hand, the composition of the scene clearly invites the viewer to put the hero’s muscular body in relationship with the cuirassed one of Menle. On the other hand, Aivas is also framed by the curvaceous female bodies of Elinei and Phulphsna, both of whom are shown in almost complete nudity. Different degrees of hardness and softness, of activity and passivity, of self-control and loss thereof, are visualized and thematized on this mirror, and exploited according to narrative roles and gender ideals and stereotypes. Distinct formal features are employed for each of them, from the edged and flattish-looking shapes of Menle’s cuirass to the rounded and flowing lines of Phulsphna. The situation on the first Epiur mirror is quite the opposite: Aivas’s body, which is shown in an almost artificially convoluted pose, has lost its traits of firm masculinity and is assimilated – among other things, through the attribution of a Phrygian cap! – to the figures of the sphere that is presided over by Elinei, who is enthroned in the center and is herself represented in a fashion that rather reminds us of the sorceress Medea in Southern Italian art (Schmidt 1992: 391–392 nos. 29–30, 35–36, 40, 43–45).

6. Conclusions

As heuristically productive as it may be, Hölscher’s model cannot be transposed tout court to Etruria. If we want to conceive Etruscan art in comparable terms, we cannot discount the degree of historical specificity of its case. Hölscher characterizes Roman art as a semantic system – a flexible system, to be sure, but still a consistent one, whose main components have a certain degree of invariance over time and across regions. This character is, in great part, the consequence of the existence of one definite center – Rome – that has a steady artistic output and functions as a reference point for the many other centers in the rest of the Empire. The situation is quite different in Etruria, where the plurality of centers, each of which with its own specific artistic traditions and peculiarities, is not combined with the political and cultural prominence of any one of them over the others. Even though these peculiarities are not incompatible with each other, their diversity is such that one is led to wonder whether we can still speak of a proper “system” in the Etruscan case, or whether we should develop a different model: for example, one consisting of several distinct subsystems or mini-systems (a model, by the way, that could, in turn, also help to integrate better the art of the Roman provinces into Hölscher’s model: see also Settis 1989).

More importantly, Rome’s relationship to Greek art from the mid-second century BCE on was mainly retrospective: it adopted, revived, and adapted Greek historical styles long after their heyday. Etruscan art, on the contrary, imported Greek stylistic elements pretty much as they were developing, despite all time lags: its relationship to Greek art was not mediated by historicizing filters. Consequently, the dynamics of innovation and conservatism worked differently in the two cultures (in several respects, the Etruscan case is rather akin to fourth-century eclecticism in Greece, as described by Borbein 1997: 1282–1292). Among other things, the lack of a pronounced erudite dimension has direct bearing on the issue addressed in this chapter. Quite likely, the reception of bodily ideals and postures in Etruria was not systematically conceptualized in terms of specific artistic “styles,” nor were the connotations of such “stylistic” features the object of an intensive discourse that went far beyond the boundaries of the workshop, as it happened in Rome (where, in fact, our evidence of this kind of discourse is provided mainly by rhetorical treatises and other written texts that were not produced by, or meant for, artisans). Instead, the Etruscan relationship with Greek body types must have been much more immediate and sensorial – not naive or unsophisticated, but certainly less conditioned by comprehensive rationalizing frames with normative ambitions.

In this respect, the tradition of Etruscan studies can suggest the direction to take in order to complement and enhance effectively Hölscher’s interpretive model. One only has to think of Larissa Bonfante’s (1989) groundbreaking article on nudity in ancient art, which provided a new way of understanding this phenomenon by interpreting it as a “costume.” Expanding on these premises, one might consider bodies and body postures themselves as costumes that gods and heroes in Etruria can change as they see fit, i.e., as was required by context or favored by historical developments. This fluidity in the use of stylistic and iconographic formulae in Etruscan art becomes particularly significant in the light of the fact that corporeal costumes are tools that define the persona (phersu!) not simply of the represented characters, but also of their makers and viewers, who experience the imagined bodies and relate to them through the medium of their own bodies. Artistic forms – styles, motifs, iconographic schemes – can be connected with bodily and movement ideals in a strong, almost visceral, way. Against this background, the reception of Classical Greek art in Etruria acquires a new dimension, one that, if investigated systematically, is likely to lead us to a more complex and thorough vision of the self-perception (the “identity”) of the Etruscans – as well as to further our understanding of both Greek and Roman art.

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GUIDE TO FURTHER READING

A systematic discussion of physical ideals, notions of the body, as well as postures and gestures (and their representation) in Etruria is still a desideratum. Several important studies exist, however, that focus on specific issues such as nudity (Bonfante 1989) or anatomical votives (Turfa 2004; Recke 2013). Tartarelli 2012 provides a good survey of anthropometric analyses of the Etruscans since the nineteenth century, while Davies 2006 discusses Etruscan “body language.” Furthermore, relevant insights on Etruscan attitudes towards the body can be gleaned from research on various topics – ranging from sport and athleticism (Thuillier 1985, 2010; see also Schneider 1995) to women and gender (see Izzet 2012). Future research will benefit from the many investigations and discussions carried out in the Greek and Roman fields (e.g., Stewart 1997; Wyke 1998; Porter 1999; Neri 2004; Cairns 2005; Daehner 2005; Hallett 2005; Hopkins and Wyke 2005; Neri 2005; Bodiou et al. 2006; Prost and Wilgaux 2006; Fabricius 2007; Thommen 2007; Fögen and Lee 2009; Osborne 2011; Squire 2011; Haug 2012). Fehr 1979, Hölscher 2003, and Catoni 2004 are especially important for the perspective advocated in this chapter. On a more general level, anthropologically informed approaches to art provide a stimulating theoretical framework for the study of Etruscan bodies as well: see, for example, Belting 2001 (also Belting et al. 2002) and Bredekamp 2010 (esp. 171–230). For the relevance of Warburg in this context, see Settis 1997a. On empathy, see Curtis and Koch 2009.