Archaeology Magazine - April 1969 - 64

OF ETRUSCAN
MASTERPIECES
ART,
Art Museum,
Worcester
April21 to June
4, 1967,by Richard Stuart Teitz.
206 pages, 97 figures on 100 plates,
1 map. Worcester Art Museum,
Worcester, Mass. 1967 $4.35
The exhibition, Masterpieces of
Etruscan Art, held at the Worcester
Art Museum during the spring of
1967, did not entirely fulfil the
promise of its title. As we learn
from the preface, the original hope
was "that this exhibition would include a greater number of important pieces from the European museums." Indeed if other European
collectionshad responded with the
generosity shown by the British
Museum, there would have been
no need to include among the masterpieces so many relatively minor
works that seem to have found a
place merely because they were
available.
The introduction deals very
briefly with the problems of Etruscan origins and language, with the
political and military history of
the Etruscans, and with their religion and art. The catalog contains
almost a hundred entries; most of
the objects are of bronze, but terracotta vases and sculpture and objects of ivory and of gold are also
included. Stone sculpture and wall
painting are not represented.
Several entries should have been
omitted as being South Italian
rather than Etruscan, notably the
bronze Nike from the Payne Knight
collection (number 43), which
seems to have been selected because it was once described as
Etruscan in a nineteenth-century
catalog of the British Museum's
bronzes. The style and treatment of
the hair of the previously unpublished centaur attachment (number
16) rule out the proposed Archaic
date, and no evidence is cited to
support the claim that this enigmatic object is Etruscan.
Another problematic object is
the oval cista of fourth- to thirdcentury type (number 82), which
is decorated with an engraved
scene in unmistakably fifth-century
Attic style. The author's interpretation of the subject (the abduction of Persephone by Hades or of
Daphne by Apollo) does not account for the presence of satyrs
and maenads. For the style and
the subject, but not for the composition, Bothmer compares the Attic
144

red-figuredcalyx-kraterby the Coghill Painter, now in the Gulbenkian
collection in Lisbon, which was
found in Agrigento and first published in 1817: upper register,
abduction of the daughters of
Leukippos; lower register, satyrs
and maenads.
Every object is illustrated, and
both text and plates have been well
printed. The design, however, is
marred by a random plate sequence
that makes the catalog unnecessarily inconvenientto use.
Brian F. Cook
The MetropolitanMuseum of Art

which, even if buried, does not last
long in changeableclimates.Nevertheless, there is a great deal of <
visual evidence for ancient furniture, provided largely by sculpture
and by representations on vases,
mosaics and wall frescoes. Some
metal furniture and fittings remain,
and a few precious wooden examples.
For forty years Miss Richter's
Ancient furniture was the standard
work on the subject, and now she
has rewritten the volume, incorporating the discoveriesmade in recent years and revising her conclusions in the light of new evidence.
The 1926 edition has 162 pages
and 345 figures;the present volume
has more than twice as many pages
THEFURNITURE
OFTHEGREEKS,
ETRUS- and
nearly twice the number of
CANSANDROMANS,
M. A. illustrations.
by GISELA
It is really a new
Richter, vi, 369 pages, 25 draw- book.
ings, 668 illustrations. Phaidon
Under the broad divisionsof AePress for New York Graphic SoGreek, Etruscan and Roman
gean,
ciety, Greenwich, Connecticut 1966 Furniture, the material is divided
$25.00
into categories: thrones, stools,
Most of the furniture used by the benches, footstools, couches, tables,
ancient Greeks, Etruscans and Ro- chests, beds and cupboards.Followmans no longer exists, for, as now, ing these chapters are discussions
it was made largely of wood, a of "furnishings"- curtains, pillows,
material which burns easily and etc.- and of technique. The Greek

Now in Paperback

...

PROGRESS
INTO THE PAST
The Rediscovery of Mycenaean Civilization
by WILLIAM

A. McDONALD

Mr. McDonald gives special attention to the work of
Heinrich Schliemann, who laid the foundations of Greek
prehistoric archaeology between 1870 and 1890; Arthur
Evans, who in the next generation established its reputation as an exact field of research; and Carl Biegen,
who guided the new science into responsible and
flexible maturity. A special feature is the line drawings
that illustrate architectural details and principles of
construction.
512 pages, illustrated
Indiana University Press
Tenth & Morton Streets
Indiana 47401
Bloomington,

$4.95

Archaeology Magazine - April 1969

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - April 1969