CHAPTER IX.

ETRUSKAN ART.

The first question that here suggests itself is, who were the Etruskans? Their name Tuskan, from Tuisko, points at once to an Aryan branch of Teutonic race. But ethnologists differ. Some say they were Phœnicians, others assert they were Egyptians; some that they were pure Teutons, and others that they were pure Kelts. Taking their old pottery into consideration, as given in Lord Hamilton’s admirable plates, or in the collection of the Museum at Clusium (Chiusi), we are induced to pronounce the aborigines of Etruria to have been Turanians, conquered by immigrant Aryans. This mixture of Aryans and Mongols under the influence of a totally different aspect of nature, on a different soil, under different social and religious conditions, produced a type quite different from the Greek--a kind of transition link between the Pelasgians and the Romans.

Two distinct immigrations of Aryans into Etruria are recorded. The first about 1650 B.C., when Pelasgians and Thyrrenians settled amongst the aborigines; and the second, 400 years before Herodotus, about the times of Thales and Lykurgus. Of the first immigration we have scarcely any relics; the second time the immigrants succeeded in forming an organised social state; they brought with them Greek mythological notions, and a kind of Greek writing. Their language and writing died out after Augustus, and disappeared altogether before Julian, fourth century A.D. Nature forced them to industry and enterprise. The Etruskans had to cultivate their fields by individual exertion; in spring they had to ward off the devastating waters of overflowing rivers, and in summer they had to provide water for their parched valleys. They consequently became masters in constructing aqueducts and irrigating the land, at an early period.

Their mythology was composed of Assyrian, Persian, and Egyptian notions, strongly tinged with gloomy superstitions. Petrifactions of the most astonishing forms abound in the plains where they settled. Near Cortona the bones of a whale have been found. The Arno valley resembles a vast elephant burial-place; and the bones of the mastodon, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus, are scattered broadcast all over old Etruria, and are still used to fence in the fields. Besides the bones of these huge monsters, those of hyænas, panthers, bears, and wolves are found in such abundance, that the peasants to this very day believe they grew like mushrooms over night, having been sown by invisible spirits to give the poor the trouble of picking them up. The aspect of nature and the remains of an antediluvian world gave the Etruskan priesthood an irresistible sway over the minds of the people. Whilst in Greece, under the influence of a happy aspect of nature, the Indian, Assyrian, and Egyptian embodiments of the forces of nature lost their fearful forms; in Etruria they gained even more gloomy and melancholy figures in the presence of everlasting thunder and lightning, and volcanic disturbances.

The Etruskans had two sets of gods.

_a._ The veiled gods, with ‘_Asar_’ at their head, representing the cosmognical forces of nature; especially fire, water, earth, and ether, like the divinities of India and Egypt.

_b._ Twelve lower divinities presiding over the order of existing and visible things. Their gods have a great resemblance to those of the Scandinavians, uniting in one distinct chain the Aryans on the Ganges, those on the Nile, and those round the Delphic oracle, with the Hyperboreans of the farthest north. They all believed in an ‘inferno,’ only with the Greeks this was an Elysium, a land of shadows, a land of happiness. The divinities of the Etruskans were phantoms of horror. The whole of their creed was devoid of a comforting union between gods and men. This despairing faith impressed the people with a ferocious character. Their art under such impressions never could reach the beautiful. A tribe of whom it has been said that their priests attacked the Romans with hissing serpents and burning torches--a tribe that crouched in fear before invisible gods, and hated every other tribe--could never take an interest in the gentler emotions produced by poetry or art. They remembered the Greek expedition against Thebes, and adorned their _burial_ urns with scenes from the battle at Marathon; they commemorated the heroic deed of a ploughman, who, in the midst of the battle, took up his plough and drove the Persians before him like a flock of frightened sheep, whilst the Greeks remembered the deed in mentioning _Echetlos_ in connection with Marathon, but possessed no record of the fact on any of their monuments. The Etruscans, however, delighted in such scenes. At their funerals they had no dances, but sanguinary fights.

No less than twelve different thunderbolts were known to them. They believed in a thunderbolt of prophecy, one of authority, one of law, one of wish, one of admonition, one of approval, one of help, one of prosperity, one of falsehood, one of plague, one of threats, and one of murder. Every transaction in life, with the best or the worst of mankind, might have been accompanied by an approving or disapproving thunder-clap. They firmly believed the thunderbolts used by the Supreme Deity were all manufactured in the fiery interior of Mount Ætna. They possessed no ritual of the dead like the Egyptians, but a thunderbolt ritual. Every day of the year that brought thunder had its special signification. All the veiled gods, and _nine_ of the secondary gods, had the power of thundering.

Their conception of angry, jealous, persecuting, thundering, and lightning divinities has much in common with the Jewish and Phœnician ideals of the Supreme Deity. This peculiarity the Northerns shared in their conception of Thor. The Etruskan belief, that aërolites were thunderbolts sent by the angels against the Titans, has a great analogy with the Persian legends assuming these to have been hurled by the Fervers against the Devas.

Their superior divinities are, like the kings or priests of Persia, Assyria, and Babylon, provided with wings. Jupiter, Diana, Minerva (a kind of female Mercury with the Etruskans, who had wings not only on her shoulders, but also on her feet) and Venus were all winged; others, like Proserpina (Persephone), Amor (Eros), and the Furies, had wings on their heads. White and black winged genii (angels and demons) are plentiful in the subterranean tombs of the old Etruskan town, Tarquinium. According to Dempster, their cars even are often provided with wings. What was a metaphor with the Greeks was turned by the Etruskans into matter-of-fact. Euripides in his ‘Orestes’ speaks of the winged car of Phœbus, and on some Eleusian coins Ceres is seen sitting in a winged car, drawn by two serpents.

From a gloomy contemplation of supernatural matters the Etruskans turned their minds to extremely worldly and practical purposes. They wished to secure their towns and to protect them against real and imaginary monsters, and they constructed excellent walls and most comfortable houses. The ‘_cavœdium_’ (‘cavum œdium’), with the _impluvium_ and _compluvium_ (the one for collecting and the other for preserving water), was altogether an Etruskan invention, and was called by the Romans who adopted it, _Tuscanicum_. They constructed temples differing only in some details from those of the Greeks. The cella was generally _square_; sometimes they had more than one cella; one in the Postica and one in the Antica (the rear and front of the temple). The portico was often filled with columns. The architectural style was a rough and primitive Doric. They never attained the majestic simplicity which distinguished this order in Greece. The columns had a base, were more slender (about fourteen moduli), stood more apart, and supported a wooden roof with clumsily-protruding beams, an unwieldy cornice, and a high pediment.

Cinerary chests they had in abundance with divinities on them, worked in reliefs of a decidedly Egyptian type. They used brazen tablets representing Osiris and Isis. Little clay figures were put into the graves to protect the dead. Amongst these has been found a winged Harpokrates or Horus, with the fore-finger of one hand on his lips, a lotus on his head, and a cornucopia in his other hand.

Their ancient pottery is more in the Egyptian than the Greek style. Their jars represent sphinxes and women; their drinking cups are in the form of human legs, with human faces replacing the knee; some are in the form of Mercury with a pointed, attached beard, like those to be seen in Egyptian divinities. Some of the patterns of their ornamentation, in general as well as in detail, are perfectly Mexican. On one of their lamps we have a winged Kentaur holding a rabbit, whilst four rabbits running after one another, form the spirited ornamentation of the border, intermixed with triangles, rosettes, or solar circles.

With their religious notions, it is not surprising that the Etruskans should have devoted the greatest care to their tombs and burial-places.

These tombs were:--

1. _Subterranean_; hewn into the tufa on plains. Steps led underground, where a vestibulum, consisting of several chambers, sometimes provided with columns, led into the vault. The ceiling of this was either horizontal or pointed, in imitation of a wooden roof. Many such tombs are found at Volci, Clusium, and Volaterra.

2. A second species of their subterranean tombs consisted of those _provided with tumuli_ above-ground; simple graves as found in Scandinavia and the north of the Western hemisphere, the corpses lying on simple stone beds.

3. _Burial chambers_ (cucumella) with artificial hills above them, and provided with a tower-like construction, or with conical columns. They are found near Volci, Tarquinii, and Viterbo.

4. _Chambers, vertically hewn into the rocks_, with a simple or decorated entrance near Tuskania.

5. Rock-hewn chambers _with façades screening the entrance_, as at Aria, or with Doric fronts as at Orchia. Asia furnished patterns for the decoration and construction of these tombs. The reliefs are full of lively scenes, reminding us of Assyrian and Babylonian sculptures. The figures are heavy, the legs short and thick; the upper part of the statues is placed ‘en face,’ whilst the legs and feet are in profile. The monstrous element predominates. Harpies, chimeras, winged lions, sphinxes, and griffins abound; but they are void of any symmetrical arrangement, and are dry, stiff, and as revolting as possible in their coarse outlines.

With regard to the construction of their walls it is remarkable that they improved very early on the Kyklopean mode, and constructed the very best regular freestone walls. They had arched gates, built with wedge-shaped stones, which produced by their span a firmly-vaulted construction. The Etruskans thus acquired a lasting merit in the history of art by the new epoch which they inaugurated with the introduction of this decidedly progressive element in the technical construction of architectural works. As _potters_ and _metal-workers_ they distinguished themselves more than either as architects or sculptors. As the Chinese are considered as the potters _par excellence_ of the farthest East, the Etruskans may be called the potters of the West. In burning, painting, and fashioning clay they appear to have acquired a speciality, so that their trade in vases extended all over the then known world, and even the Greeks furnished their houses with Etruskan pottery in preference to their own. The gloomy mythology of the Etruskans was far better suited to potters, manufacturing black vases with red figures, or red vases with black figures, or for casting dark bronze figures, than to sculptors handling white marble. They also distinguished themselves in chiselling and founding metal. Innumerable chests, candelabra, metal frames for looking-glasses, and other utensils show their cleverness in working gold, silver, and bronze. Some ivory carvings, described in a report of the Archæological Society at Rome, 1862, are of great interest. They were found at Præneste (Palestrina), where also silver vessels in the purest Egyptian style, and an ivory tablet with Assyrian patterns, were excavated. More important even than these discoveries are four ivory tablets found at Corneto, showing traces of gilding and painting. The carvings represent scenes of every-day life, mixed with mystic figures. We see on the tablets a lady and gentleman sitting at dinner, served by a little boy; a huntsman chasing game; a kind of sea-divinity holding in each hand a fish; and a man in a biga driving winged horses. These figures might have formed representations concerning the zodiac, namely: the Twins, Sagittarius, Pisces, and the Sun (Phœbus or Horus). The receding forehead of the driver and his manner of holding the whip are types which we constantly meet in Egyptian sculptures and reliefs.

About 660 B.C. Eucheir, Diopos, Eugrammos and Demeratos were driven from Korinthum into Etruria, and from that date we note a decided improvement in the artistic productions. The Etruskans began to excel in terra-cotta and bronze works. Their vases, amphoræ, statuettes, cinerary and mystic chests, prove this. Their mystic chests (cistæ mysticæ, corresponding to the quippa-chests of the Mexicans) were made of embossed bronze. The lids were ornamented with mysterious animals, and the legs formed of the claws or paws of mythical brutes. Foliage and Greek frets in good arrangement were also used. Their candelabra are of a superior design. Other works of art, such as ornamented backs and handles for mystic mirrors, in gold, silver, or bronze, are of excellent technical execution.

There was, however, too much of the aborigine Turanian element left in the Etruskans. The noble and elevating rhythmus of Greek idealisation is everywhere wanting. Cooking utensils, small pieces of furniture, tables, chairs, and couches, aqueducts and viaducts, and even cloacas, were made and constructed to perfection, but as soon as they attempted the production of human forms, or of higher works in architecture, they did not succeed. The heads of their figures are either too small or too large. The legs are short; the drapery in stiff lines hangs down with rope-like regularity. Animals are much better executed; but the human form, in consequence of a scrupulous and constrained conception, and an exaggerated attention to detail, had a cold, lifeless appearance, void of all spiritual animation. Their imagination was one-sidedly directed by nature and religion to take a gloomy and distorted view of creation, and their products bear this spiritual stamp. In everything they touched we recognise the Egyptian mythology with its stifling breath, and the influence of the volcanic ground on which the Aryans were thrown, amongst a number of superstitious Turanians. The rumbling, fire-spitting Vesuvius and Ætna worked on the brains of the new immigrants. The sudden, devastating bursts of fire and water filled their minds with horror; they were forced to ponder over the instability of human things. The beauty of the Italian sky, the exuberant luxury of the vegetation, heightened in them a feeling of dumb despair. The contrast between life and death was too striking, and filled the souls of the artists with awe and dread, reflected in their artistic compositions.

Their representations were often divided into two distinct compartments. On one side were scenes from the lower regions. Mantus, Mania, and furies pursuing the deceased with hammers. Mantus of the Etruskans, probably a descendant of Radamanthus, was an infernal divinity. Mania (whose name we have preserved in the words _mania_ and _maniac_) was the mother of the Lares and persecuted the dead. Our readers must begin to see whence many of the horrifying scenes of the middle ages took their origin. On the other side were scenes from life in the upper regions--joyous, triumphal processions and festivities. Drunkenness and licentiousness are always twin-sisters of superstition and bigotry. These arrangements recall the same custom of dividing subjects in antithetical groups observed in Assyria, where we find on the slabs hunts in the upper compartments, and joyous festivities in the row below. The subjects chosen with the Assyrians were undoubtedly much healthier. Hard work first, and joy and happiness afterwards. The Etruskans kept to the old Egyptian customs, reminding man continually of the short duration of his life. The mummy placed in Egyptian banqueting halls, with the inscription: ‘Eat and drink; such a one wilt thou be,’ had a pernicious ethical effect; instead of sobering man down, it drove him to reckless and despairing gaiety and extravagance. The Etruskans, though filling their imaginations with horrors, could never master art in life. They had the savage fondness for adorning their persons with innumerable trinkets. The desire to shine conspicuously for the short and uncertain time of their existence absorbed their artistic endeavours, and this fashion prevails amongst the peasants in Italy at the present day. The patterns are now filigree Moresque; in ancient times they were in a clumsy Greek style. To wear a ring was considered essential to man’s and woman’s existence.

This led them very early to cultivate glyptics, or the art of stone-cutting. The subjects were partly mythological, partly heroic; the artists delighted in strong muscles, attitudinizing groups, and theatrical postures.

In the paintings and mosaics, with which they adorned their burial chambers, we may distinguish, in reference to their treatment:

a. An Archaic style;

b. An Etruskan style.

A. In the _Archaic Style_ they exhibit a thorough acquaintance with Greek mythology and classical poetry. Orpheus, Homer, Hesiod and Pindar furnish the scenes, but the dead play the most conspicuous part. We have, in another world, festivities in vine bowers and blooming gardens; processions, gymnastic games and races amongst the departed. The grouping is spirited so far as variety is concerned, but the execution is rough, and bare of all higher artistic feeling.

B. In the _Etruskan Style_, stern simplicity and roughness yield to a freer treatment of the human form. The thick-set, short figures are replaced by better drawn and lighter forms; the subjects are exclusively taken from Etruskan mythology. White and black spirits (angels and devils), armed with big hammers, are represented as fighting for the souls of the departed. In one of the graves (see Dempster and Agincourt) we have a soul hanged, and tormented with iron instruments, roasting over a brisk fire. In these products, in spite of the intervention of the Roman period of history, we find the direct connecting link between the old Assyrian, Egyptian, Etruskan, and early Christian arts.

The Etruskans indulged in fantastic conceptions, and rejoiced in forced and cruel scenes, and in bizarre compositions. Art with them was exclusively technical. We may arrange their works into the following five groups:--

1. The original _Tuscanica_ (as Strabo has it) or Etruskan works. Heavy in form and details; dresses very stiff; figures without beards. Of this group we have many bronze figures, very few sculptures in stone, some gems, and some very old wall-paintings.

2. The Oriental group. Imitations of Egyptian, Assyrian, and Babylonian patterns. Tapestry, for floor and wall-decorations, was much used. The imitations were good, but without any effort at originality. Remains plentiful.

3. Caricatures distinguished by grotesque quaintness. This style predominates at periods, when nations look upon art as superfluous; not as one of the most important factors of civilization. Taste degenerates, and the higher aspirations of art are crippled by distorted products. The quaint is preferred to the beautiful, and the dynamic force of the artistic element, driven into this direction, loses itself in a broad grin at everything sacred and elevated in State, religion, and science, fostering a deplorable spirit of vulgar egotism, which looks down upon the sublime exertions of artists, as the mere vagaries of simpletons or madmen.

4. Works in the best Greek style, but only in bronze, as frames and handles of mirrors. Whenever the higher spirit of art is neglected, the power of the artist is directed to small matters; he serves trade and nothing but trade. We have in these ‘Articles of Etruria’ the prototypes of our ‘Articles de Paris.’

5. Mechanical products, such as helmets, weapons, swords, shields, hatchets, clubs, wall-breakers, cooking utensils, pots, pans, and saucers, were of exquisite workmanship, but without any attempt at artistic forms. The utilitarian incubus is as bad as the hierarchical canon; both expel all higher aspirations from the realm of art.

The Etruskans thought, with many of us, that if the house were only built of dry bricks, the carpet thick, the furniture solid and heavy, and the knife sharp, it was unnecessary to care for anything else. Whilst such ideas exist, art, in a higher sense, will remain as little possible, as it was with the Etruskans.