Two major museums offer opportunities to explore Tuscany’s Etruscan past this season.
Votive figure from the Collezione Guasti
Prato’s Palazzo Pretorio’s ‘The Shadow of the Etruscans: Traces of a Culture in Hills and Valleys,’ March 19 through June 30, focuses on the Etruscan populations that settled to the north of the Arno river, along the Florence-Prato-Pistoia route and in the Mugello/Val di Sieve and Montalbano.
With more than 30 artifacts divided into two sections, the exhibition sheds light on Etruscan views of the sacred and the afterlife. Ten bronze votive figures from the excavations of the Gonfienti settlement, founded in the sixth century BCE, belonged to the middle classes. The two dozen pietre fiesolane steles on display are from the tombs of nobles, whose images appear among the reliefs on the stones.
For details, see Palazzo Pretorio’s website or call 0574/19349961.
Exploring the mysterious world of Etruscan language, Cortona’s Museo dell’Accademia Etrusca e della Città di Cortona (MAEC) hosts ‘The Etruscans: Masters of Writing.’ Running from March 19 through July 31, the exhibition features the recent discovery of Etruscan inscriptions close to Montpellier, France, and the rediscovery in Cortona of the Tabula cortonesis, the third longest Etruscan text in existence.
Organized in collaboration with the Musée du Louvre and the Henri Prades Museum in Lattes, the exhibition features some of the most important examples of Etruscan writing, from the Zagreb mummy to the Pyrgi tablets.
Though Etruscan writing is a major field of study, many key elements of the ancient language remain unclear. The scarcity of long texts and the commercial, legal or funerary nature of most remaining documents have made the language elusive.
For more information, visit the MAEC’s website.
