- chapter 55: Portraiture –
Figure 55.2 Head of a woman, once part of a “Canopic” cinerary urn from Castelluccio di Pienza, late
seventh-early sixth century bce. Museo Archeologico, Siena (Photo: author)....evidence of a remarkable new concept of art; namely, the inclusion within its
range of a concept of personality. This concept, aiming at the specifi c elements which
constitute humans as persons – not merely as types – at the same time represents an
endeavour very proper to art; for a portrait can never be achieved by verbal description
alone: it has to be shown.^17Nevertheless, Brendel shies away from describing the Chiusine heads as “portraits in the
modern sense;” instead, he calls them “proto-portraits” since they “incorporate a true
concept of personality” and “individual traits [do] prevail over the typical.”^18 John Prag
concurs with this assessment, noting that they “mark a very important psychological and
artistic step away from the general,”^19 especially at a time when no other contemporary
culture was exploring this same concept.^20
In other regions of Etruria during the seventh and sixth centuries bce, patrons
commissioned statues in terracotta, stone and bronze, which were placed both inside and
outside the tomb. These include the men and women found inside the Pietrera Tomb
in Vetulonia, which have been variously interpreted as mourners, substitute bodies or
as the ancestors of the family buried within the tomb.^21 While their faces cannot be
characterized as portraits in the true sense of the word, Brendel observes that, “their
richness of realistic detail – hair style, necklaces, and personal ornament – furthers [the]
illusion [of]...a personal note.... They are the dead. Also, they are people of wealth and
refi nement, an aristocratic lot.”^22 Likewise, the fi gures that recline on the well-known
terracotta sarcophagi from Cerveteri, now in the Villa Giulia and the Louvre, represent
a married couple but do not depict individual physiognomies. Rather, as Haynes notes
in her discussion of the Louvre example, “the couple’s smooth oval faces have identical
features...[and represent] a type of face that was adopted by Etruscan artists in the
second half of the sixth century.”^23 Brendel notes a similar treatment in the faces found
on the contemporary cinerary statues from Chiusi: “we cannot doubt that, as with the