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A landmark introduction to Etruscan art and society filled with groundbreaking insights and never-before-published artworksThe Etruscans: From the Heart of Ancient Italy introduces a culture that flourished in ancient Etruria in Italy from the ninth to second centuries BCE. Renowned for their beauty and craftsmanship, the nearly two hundred artworks in this book offer fascinating insight into Etruscan society through wall paintings, bronze and terracotta vessels and sculptures, and opulent gold jewelry, as well as other treasures. This comprehensive exhibition catalogue reveals how Etruscan achievements influenced Western civilization, leaving a legacy that still captivates today.
Featured in this book will be the Linen Book of Zagreb, a third-century BCE calendar of rituals and sacrifices that has never been shown in the United States; a variety of bronze sculptures, vessels, and mirrors revealing the Etruscan skill in working with this metal; lavish gold jewelry and a gold granulated bowl covered with more that 250,000 grains; terracotta and bronze models of houses discovered in tombs, as well as the pediment from the funeral shrine at Ponte Rotto in Vulci; precious gold and silver gilt vessels and other treasures from the Regolini-Galassi tomb on loan from the Vatican's Museo Gregoriano Etrusco; a decorated and painted ostrich egg from Vulci; and a hydria painted with the myth of Heracles attaching the Hydra by the Eagle Painter from the Getty Villa.
As the first major work in more than twenty years to feature and describe new findings and other developments in the field of Etruscan art and archaeology, this book provides groundbreaking insights by leading scholars into this area of ancient art. With illustrations and descriptions of many works that have not been published previously, this volume is certain to be the cornerstone publication on the topic.
Distributed for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Exhibition Schedule:Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco(May 2-September 20, 2026)
San Antonio Museum of Art(October 2026-January 2027)
About the author
Renée Dreyfus is the George and Judy Marcus Distinguished Curator and curator in charge of ancient art, and
Louise Chu is associate curator of ancient art, both at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
Lisa Pieraccini is a continuing lecturer in the department of the Material Culture of the Ancient Mediterranean, Etruscan, and Roman Art, at the University of California, Berkeley, and the president of the Archaeological Institute of America's San Francisco chapter and an advisory council member for MAPRA (Mediterranean Antiquities Provenance Research Alliance).
Richard De Puma is professor emeritus of classical art and archaeology at the University of Iowa.
