CHAPTER SIXTY THREE

MODERN APPROACHES TO

ETRUSCAN CULTURE

Marie-Laurence Haack

ETRUSCAN MYTH IN THE RENAISSANCE

T

he rediscovery of Etruscan culture in modern times dates back to the mid-nineteenth
century when a movement for the promotion of the ancient past occurred. It was
motivated both by scholarly curiosity for all things Etruscan and by a political will to
appropriate the prestige of a brilliant civilization. Reminding citizens of the Etruscan
past was fi rst used by the Florentine Republic, at a time when it had designs on the
neighboring cities; Tuscany was depicted as the most ancient cradle of Republican liberty:
in that sense, it can be described as an “Etruscan myth”.^1 The Florentine chronicler, G.
Villani, in his Nuova Cronica, and the Florentine chancellor, L. Bruni, in his Historiarum
Florentini populi libri XII, extolled an autochthonous Etruria that was independent from
Rome. With the stranglehold of the Medici on local power in the fi fteenth century,
Etruria was then considered in its monarchic aspect. L. B. Alberti, in his De re aedifi catoria
(1485), prefaced with a dedication by Angelus Politianus to Lorenzo the Magnifi cent,
mentioned the “admirable things that were said about the Etruscan kings.” Among the
Etruscan kings, the fi rst to be taken into account is Porsenna. L. B. Alberti, B. Peruzzi
and the Sangallo brothers, basing themselves on an account given by Varro and passed
on by Pliny the Elder,^2 reconstructed his extraordinary monumental tomb with a maze.
The Dominican monk, G. Nanni, who called himself Annio da Viterbo, in his
Antiquitatum variarum (1498), went so far as to assert the religious primacy of Tuscans on
Romans (see Chapter 61). Thus he claimed to have found passages by ancient historians
enabling him to reconstruct Etruscan history. In them the Etruscans were described as
the fi rst inhabitants of the world after the Flood, the heirs to a Janus-Hercules taken
to Tuscany by Noah and initiated to the rites and the doctrine of ancient Jews. From
the late fi fteenth century onwards, the discovery of Etruscan vestiges launched a fashion
for the Etruscans. Tarquinia’s funeral chambers were discovered during the pontifi cate
of Innocent VIII (1484–1492), large sarcophagi were brought to light near Viterbo in
1493, and then the “tomb of the she-mule” near Sesto Fiorentino in 1494, the hypogaeum
of Castellina in Chianti in 1507, and numerous Arretine vases were found. Florentine
patricians developed a taste for Etruscan vases, urns and statuettes. Artists started to