A Daughter of Ancient Etruria

Terracotta statue of a young woman,
Etruscan, late 4th-early 3rd century B.C.

It was during a recent visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in a woefully neglected corner of the museum, that I encountered her. Half hidden in a quiet mezzanine above the Greek and Roman galleries, the terracotta figure stood in solemn isolation. There was something haunting about her presence, as though this daughter of ancient Etruria had emerged momentarily from the underworld.

Fashioned in the late fourth or early third century B.C., the life-sized young woman once stood in a sanctuary. Her elaborate necklaces, armband, and grape-cluster earrings closely resemble those found at Lavinium, the city traditionally founded by King Aeneas, father of the Latin race, after he wandered from fallen Troy. Some of her pendants even bear Etruscan gods and heroes.

She belongs to that mysterious twilight when the old Italic world was slowly yielding to Rome. Yet standing there in the dim and forgotten gallery, she seemed less an archaeological object than an apparition, a solitary remnant of a vanished people whose gods, rites, and sanctuaries have long since disappeared, but who, through her, still whisper to us.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, September 9th, Feast of San Gorgonio