- Alexandra A. Carpino –
were placed in a variety of funerary contexts, both within and outside the tomb, as
early as the seventh century bce. Evidence suggests that this tradition originated in
the Villanovan period (circa 750 bce), when the Proto-Etruscans’ distinctive funerary
ossuaries – the biconical urns – were anthropomorphized through coverings – either a
helmet or a bowl – which many scholars believe “symbolize[d] the head of the deceased.”^9
Jocelyn Penny Small, for example, recently described the design that appears on the
bronze hemispherical helmet from Tarquinia’s so-called “Tomb of the Priest” as both “an
abstraction and as a face...[there are] precisely formed circles for the ‘eyes’ and the center
of the ‘mouth’ [is] placed between a more roughly produced brow and nose line.”^10 The
survival of this stylized face not only suggests that there was “a conceptual link between
the deceased and the burial urn already in existence in the Villanovan period,”^11 but its
presence in a tomb surrounded by grave goods that identify the deceased as a warrior also
demonstrates the close connection between personal and social identity at this time.^12
During the seventh century bce, the ideas manifested by these Villanovan receptacles
appear to have generated what many scholars agree is the Etruscans’ earliest portrait
tradition,^13 visible in the terracotta and/or bronze cinerary urns from the Chiusi region
in central Tuscany, which take the form of vessels covered with lids in the form of human
heads (Figures 55.1 and 55.2). These funerary vessels effectively convey both the character
and physical traits of the deceased, along with elements demonstrating their social
identity. Small, for example, hails the sense of “personality” that exudes from a three-
dimensional viewing of these artifacts, noting that “the Etruscan combination of the
abstract with the real”^14 resulted in works that appear “at fi rst glance to be unrealistic and
cartoon-like” but which “capture...recognizable likenesses.”^15 Moreover, as Brendel has
observed, “individual variety indeed became a theme of [this] art”^ and for the fi rst time,
“Etruscan art...achieved the transition from generic to specifi c representations.”^16 A close
study of the heads found on the Chiusine urns, moreover, reveals that none is exactly like
any other – thus, their artists worked consciously to portray different individuals, each
with their own physiognomy, thereby giving us, in the words of Brendel:
Figure 55.1 Male “Canopic” cinerary urn from Dolciano, late seventh-early sixth century bce.
Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Chiusi. (Photo: author).