Spouses sarcophagus from Cerveteri (Louvre)

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Cerveteri spouses sarcophagus from the Louvre

The spouses sarcophagus of Cerveteri ( French Sarcophage des époux de Cerveteri ) is an Etruscan artifact from the late 6th century BC. BC and is one of the most important works of art of the Etruscan sepulchral culture . The sarcophagus was found in the Banditaccia necropolis of Cerveteri and is now in the Louvre in Paris . There is another spouse sarcophagus from Cerveteri , which also comes from the Banditaccia necropolis and is now in the Etruscan National Museum in Villa Giulia inRome is kept.

discovery

Etruscan settlement and influence area

The spouses sarcophagus was discovered in 1845 by Giampietro Campana , an Italian entrepreneur and art collector, in the Banditaccia necropolis of Caere , now known as Cerveteri. The Etruscans called this place Caisra . Because Campana had acquired some of his property illegally, his collection was confiscated and sold following his imprisonment and conviction. The French Empire acquired a large part of the collection in 1861. The most valuable artefacts, including the spouse's sarcophagus, later went to the Louvre. The sarcophagus is listed there under inventory no. Cp 5194 led. The current holdings of Etruscan and Greek ceramics in the Louvre come mainly from the Campana collection.

description

Detail depicting the spouses

The sarcophagus is 1.9 m long and 1.1 m wide. It consists of terracotta , an unglazed pottery made from clay minerals . The sarcophagus was made in four separate sections and each section was burned separately. After the firing and assembly, the sarcophagus was painted. Most of the painting has been preserved, albeit a little faded. The people are portrayed slightly larger than life .

Apparently a married couple is shown lying on a sofa together . The couple have stretched their legs and are leaning on two cushions in the shape of wineskins . The man has put his right arm around the woman's shoulder in a familiar pose. He is leaning on a pillow with his left arm, his left hand is no longer there. The man's torso is bare, while the woman wears clothes that cover the torso and arms. The couple's legs are hidden under a blanket or coat. The woman wears calcei repandi , pointed, ankle-high, closed boots on her feet . The man, on the other hand, does not wear footwear. The spouses face the viewer and show gestures of offering objects.

Husband in half profile

The woman's black hair is braided into fine, long braids . Two of them fall on the front left and right over your upper body. On her head she wears a tutulus , the traditional Etruscan headgear. The man's hair is noticeably lighter and parted in the middle. At the back of the head, the hair is arranged in long braids. The man's beard hair , on the other hand, is as dark as his partner's hair color. The dark ocher skin tone of the man contrasts clearly with the pale cream-colored skin of the woman. Both figures have similar facial features with almond-shaped eyes, strongly arched eyebrows and an archaic smile .

The spouse's sarcophagus was restored in the Louvre-Lens in October 2013 and presented to the public from December 2013 to April 2014 in the exhibition Les Étrusques et la Méditerranée (The Etruscans and the Mediterranean) in the Galerie des expositions temporaires (gallery for temporary exhibitions) .

background

19th century drawing of the spouse sarcophagus

The sarcophagus has the shape of a sofa bed ( kline ) on which the deceased sat down for a banquet . This custom originally comes from Asia Minor . The Etruscans, like the Greeks before them, had adopted the Eastern custom of eating in a lying position and the type of artistic representation. Unlike in the Greek world, where banquets, so-called symposia , were reserved for men, the woman on the sarcophagus takes place next to her husband in the same proportion and pose. Obviously, unlike other ancient cultures, women played an important role in Etruscan society. The coloring of the figures follows a gender-specific scheme. The man's ocher skin indicates his activity in the outside world in the open air, while the pale skin of the woman indicates an inner, domestic sphere.

The couple lie on cushions in the shape of wineskin, alluding to the sharing of wine, a ceremony that was part of the funeral ritual. It can be assumed that the couple's gestures also indicate funeral rituals. The missing items can only be guessed at. The woman seems to be giving something to her partner with her right hand. She was probably holding an alabastron from which she was dripping oil into her husband's outstretched hand, which was meant to be anointed for the dead. With her left hand she might be showing a pomegranate as a symbol of immortality common in ancient times . Since the figures were attending a banquet, the objects they held in their hands could also have been eating or drinking vessels. The man in particular must have held a goblet in his right hand, with which a libation might be offered.

It is very likely that the sarcophagus did not contain the corpses , but the ashes of the deceased couple. In this respect, the designation as a funeral urn might be more appropriate. However, the term sarcophagus also refers to the size and shape of the container. The square body made of terracotta surely imitates a wooden upholstered frame with inlays made of precious materials. During the Archaic period , terracotta was a preferred material for funerary monuments and architectural decorations in southern Etruria . The malleability of the clay offered the artisans numerous opportunities and compensated for the lack of stones suitable for sculpture in southern Etruria.

The sarcophagus is said to have been built around 520 BC. Dated. The style of this funerary sculpture shows the influence that artists from Greece had on Etruscan art at the time , especially the Ionians who lived in the late 6th century BC. Immigrated in large numbers. The faces and the shapes of the bodies are inspired by Ionic sculpture . However, some features are typical of Etruscan art, e.g. B. the emphasis on the gestures of the deceased and a certain lack of formal agreement (coherence), as is particularly evident in the low plasticity of the legs compared to the torso.

literature

  • Marie-Françoise Briguet, Pier Roberto Del Francia: Le Sarcophage des époux de Cerveteri du musée du Louvre. Éditions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, Paris 1988, ISBN 2711821684 .
  • Sybille Haynes : Etruscan Civilization: a cultural history. Getty Publications, Los Angeles 2000, ISBN 0892366001 , pp. 214-217.
  • Nancy Thomson de Grummond : Terracotta “Sarcophagi” and Ash Urns. In: Nancy Thomson de Grummond, Lisa Pieraccini (eds.): Caere. University of Texas Press, Austin 2016, ISBN 9781477310465 , p. 183.

Web links

Commons : Cerveteri Spouses Sarcophagus (Louvre)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files