- Larissa Bonfante –
Etruscan world – examples are found in Latium, in Campania, and throughout the former
Greek colonies of southern Italy and Sicily.^60 The earliest image appears on a bronze
horse trapping from an eighth-century bc woman’s tomb at Decima, in Latium, near the
border of Etruria, where it had been deposited along with the chariot that indicated her
high status. It represents two naked human fi gures, a woman nursing a child and a man
with two birds pecking out his eyes: as often, it is hard to tell whether they are meant to
represent a divine, mythological or a human couple. Two archaic statues, the kourotrophos
representing Leto with the baby Apollo in her arms from the roof of the temple at Veii,
and the so-called Mater Matuta from Chiusi, a seated funerary fi gure of an enthroned
goddess with a baby (Fig. 20.11), were probably infl uenced by Greek models, for they
hold the babies, but do not nurse them.^61 Such unusual fi gures as the life-size, sixth-
century bc funerary limestone statue of a woman nursing two babies found at Megara
Hyblaea, in Sicily, or the life-size, standing statue of a woman with a baby from Volterra,
the so-called Maffei statue, based on a Greek fourth-century bc model to which the
Etruscan artist has added the baby,^62 all demonstrate the lack of stabile Greek models for
this motif. For Etruscan religion and ideals, on the other hand, the need for such images
was important enough to cause artists and craftsmen to invent new models and modify
old ones, breaking through the prohibition against representing nursing or viewing the
naked female breast.
The fourth to second centuries bc saw a proliferation of these nursing mothers, in
a variety of forms, functions, sizes, styles, iconography and context that refl ect the
local importance of the motif and the impelling need for such an image for the devout.
The many later nursing matres from Capua, and the hundreds of terracotta fi gurines of
kourotrophoi from sanctuaries all date from this period (see Chapter 54).
Figure 20.11 Life-size stone ash urn from Chiusi. Enthroned woman or goddess,
so-called Mater Matuta, holding swaddled baby on her lap. Florence, Museo Archeologico.
450–425 bc. (Soprintendenza alle Antichità d’Etruria.)