- chapter 58: Mirrors in art and society –
known by their Etruscan names inscribed on the mirrors and can then be compared with
other representations showing similar or identical attributes. These have been carefully
collected by various authors in the Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC),
which has revolutionized the study of ancient Greek, Etruscan and Roman iconography
in recent years.^33 (See also Chapter 25.)
Other important iconographical questions concern the patrons of mirrors and their
functions. For example, we know that Etruscan mirrors were almost exclusively used by,
or at least buried with women.^34 How then can we explain the popularity of violent battle
scenes on articles supposedly made to appeal to women? There are, of course, numerous
depictions that seem, to us at least, more appropriately feminine: bathing scenes, women
or goddesses at their toilette, scenes with mythical or legendary lovers like Venus and
Adonis, Eos and Tithonos, or Paris and Helen, or depictions that might be appropriate
for a grieving mother.^35 In this context, dueling warriors seem out of place. However, the
same “inappropriateness” also occurs on Etrusco-Hellenistic cinerary urns that show many
battle scenes and even depictions of matricide on urns belonging to women. In the case of
mirrors, Alexandra Carpino (2009) has recently tackled this problem. She lists only four
male burials with mirrors,^36 but we can only guess at how many others may have gone
unrecorded by the careless excavations of the nineteenth century when most mirrors were
discovered. It seems unlikely that Etruscan men were unconcerned with their appearance
and did not use mirrors. I suspect that they did but (1) we have lost the contexts of
many male burials that may have contained mirrors, or (2) mirrors, for whatever reason,
were not considered appropriate tomb gifts for Etruscan men although they may have
used them while alive. Carpino, for her part, suggests that the subjects on mirrors that
seem inappropriate for women may well have had other meanings that were signifi cant
for them at the time. For example, during much of the fourth century bc the Etruscans
were under attack from various outside forces. Battle scenes with Homeric warriors like
Achilles and Memnon may have symbolized the bravery and strength needed to defeat
contemporary enemies. Mirrors depicting legendary Greek heroes “...not only associated
the mirrors’ patrons [whether men or women] with the grandeur of the Homeric heroes,
but also functioned as inspirational calls to heroism.”^37
PROPOSED GROUPS OF MIRRORS: KRANZSPIEGEL,
DIOSKOUROI AND LASA MIRRORSBecause so many mirrors have been deprived of their archaeological contexts, scholars
have attempted to group related examples with the hope that these proposed groups
might be assigned to specifi c sites and provide clues to dating.^38 In the case of the
Praenestine mirrors, for example, we see that the disc shape is almost always a distinctive
piriform rather than the standard Etruscan circular shape (Fig. 58.6). These piriform
mirrors, even when undecorated, can be tentatively assigned to workshops in ancient
Praeneste. But it is not only their distinctive shape that helps to identify them. There
are other characteristics: their relatively large size compared to Etruscan mirrors; their
archaic Latin inscriptions; their complicated and crowded mythological scenes, often
with fi gures overlapping the ornamental borders.^39
Three other types of mirrors have long attracted the attention of scholars because they
seem to share iconographical, technical or stylistic features that suggest they were made
in the same workshops or perhaps by the same artisans. The most characteristic feature