Etruscan Leopards and Lions

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BOSTON

Etruscan Leopards and Lions

Author(s): Cornelius Vermeule
Source: Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts, 1961, Vol. 59, No. 315 (1961), pp. 13-21
Published by: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/417133

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1. Etruscan leopard. William Francis Warden Fund 61.130

Etruscan Leopards and Lions

RIVING NORTHWEST from Rome toward Pisa on the modern successor
to the ancient Via Aurelia, one is soon in the “Etruscan Places” of D. H.
' Lawrence. The names ring with the romance of heroic deeds, curious
customs and funereal remains of a vanished civilization. Nature has always been at

her romantic best here.
From many a lonely hamlet,
Which, hid by beech and pine,
Like an eagle’s nest, hangs on the crest

Of purple Apennine;

From lordly Volaterrae,

Where scowls the far-famed hold
Piled by the hands of giants

For godlike kings of old;

Cervetri, Tarquinia, Vulci, Orbetello, Piombino, Volterra, whether the names
are ancient or modern, they conjure up the spell of Lord Macaulay. They also re-
call the material images of Etruscan civilization, which have been enriching the
collections of Europe and the two Americas for over a century and a half.
Stopping at Montalto di Castro in the heart of the wild and marshy section of

I3

Etruria, halfway between Tarquinia and Orbetello, one is surrounded for miles
by remains of the great necropolis of Vulci. Little has been explored of this perhaps
the richest of southern Etruscan cities, but for generations the tomb complexes have
yielded the finest in Greek vases and Etruscan bronzes of the centuries from 650
to 450 B.C. These Etruscans were wealthy enough from their mining resources
to command the best in artistic produce from workshops in Corinth, Athens and
the Greek cities to the East. The demands of Etruscan religion and interest in the
hereafter meant that prized possessions found their way into elaborate rock-cut
tombs beneath the naturally hilly terrain and beneath artificial mounds or tumuli.

The insides of the tombs at Vulci, finished like rooms in houses, were occasionally
decorated with frescoes suggesting the life of the deceased, the Etruscan pantheon
and the mythological creatures to be encountered in the world of the gods. At
Tarquinia the painting of underground tombs was carried out widely, giving us
the great legacy in this branch of Etruscan art familiar to all in recent picture books.
At Vulci in the period 600 to 500 B.C. a certain emphasis was placed on the outside
of tombs. The tops and passageways were decorated with large sculptures carved
in a comparatively hard, grey volcanic stone known as nenfro. Nenfro is a limestone-
like version of the softer, brown or reddish-brown material known as tufa. Tufa
was widely used in sculpture and architectural decoration by the Etruscans and by
the Romans of the early Republic, before a taste was developed for marbles imported
from the Greek world, Southern Italy, Sicily or Greece itself. The subjects of these
tomb-guardians at Vulci ranged through the whole repertory of Greek fantastic
and mythological creativity. There were centaurs, half-man and with the body of
a horse attached behind. There were sphinxes, creatures with female heads and the
bodies of winged lions. Pegasus, the winged horse ridden by Bellerophon, appears.
Griffins of a sort are recorded. The most common creation was the winged lion.
Finally, there was the very rare category of the leopard.

From the early part of the last century excavators at Vulci began coming upon
these creatures in their search for the rich contents of the tombs. Museums and
private collections in Italy, Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, France, England,
the United States and South America contain specimens, many of indifferent quality
or poor preservation. Others were recorded in early publications and are now lost
or have only come to light again in recent years. The Museum of Fine Arts will
shortly place on display in the new Etruscan Gallery a very fine specimen of a winged
lion, and a recumbent leopard whose near-uniqueness is matched by his fetching
composure. Both may be considered revelations in present-day knowledge of
Etruscan Art.

Let us consider the leopard first (Figs. 1-2)". Rudyard Kipling said of the leopard,
before he acquired his spots, “he was the ’sclusivest sandiest-yellowish-brownest
of them all — a greyish-yellowish catty-shaped kind of beast.” These adjectives fit
admirably. He is relaxing in a pose of dignified meditation with his head down on
the side of his chest, his forelegs almost tucked under, his hind legs against his side
and tail curled up over his powerful left haunch. Pointed ears amid the bow curve
of hair on the forehead, large almond eyes surrounded by folds of skin, a powerful
snout and feline cheeks complete the picture.

14

2. Side view of the leopard in Fig. 1

The beauty of the leopard lies in the timeless construction of his body, the arrange-
ment of the solids and the silhouette. He was certainly meant to be seen from be-
low, befitting his perch in a position over the lintel, on the side or on the top of a
tomb. Like the beasts of early Greek vases or like the leopards of mediaeval heraldry,
he may have had a counterpart or pendant facing in the opposite direction. Like
early Greek archaic pedimental sculpture, he is carved within the framework of
a slender vertical profile, one which from all angles emphasizes the power of his
neck. The balanced simplicity of the masses of carving gains further emphasis from
the fact that, in reversal of the process described by Kipling, this leopard has prob-
ably lost his spots. They were no doubt applied in paint over a thin layer of stucco,
traces of which are visible on every surface.

Where did the Etruscan sculptor of about 575 B.c. derive his model for such a
beast? Just as there were no centaurs, Pegasuses or sphinxes in Etruria at this time,
so we can be sure that leopards were nearly as difficult to see. There were certainly
small mountain felines and large wildcats, but this is hardly one of them. This
leopard is an Etruscan version of those beasts, incorrectly named “‘panthers’’ for
archaeological convenience, who are found on vases and in terra cottas made at
Corinth between the Greek mainland and the Peloponnesus in the generations just
before and after 600 B.c. To the Corinthian school, although found near Thebes
in Boeotia, belongs a terra-cotta leopard in Kipling’s sandy-yellow, enlivened with
reddish-brown spots and lines (Fig. 3). Long in the collections, this alert feline once
formed the plastic handle of a large vase.?

IS

3. Terracotta leopard from Boeotia. Henry L. Pierce Collection 01.8055

4. Bucchero oenochoe with leopards
Gift of Mrs. H. P. Kidder 01.13

16

6. Etruscan winged lion.
William Francis Warden
Fund 61.131

17

7. Etruscan winged lion. Courtesy, the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Rogers Fund, 1960

8. Etruscan winged lion. Courtesy,
the University Museum, Philadelphia

18

The method of transmittal down the Gulf of Corinth, across the Sicilian Sea,
perhaps by way of Tarentum, and up the Adriatic or Ionian Sea to Etruria must
have been through vases such as this. A contemporary Etruscan pitcher in bucchero
or blackened volcanic clay in the collection shows the results in similarly small
dimensions. A leopard with archaic Greek face similar to his large counterpart in
stone reclines with several brothers on the body of the vase and, while looking out
at the viewer, curls his tail up in suitably decorative fashion (Fig. 4). The monu-
mental Greek parallel, however, survives from a building closer to Etruria than the
city of Corinth. A beast who is half leopard, half lion filled both halves of the West
or rear pediment of the Temple of Artemis at Corfu on Corinth’s island-colony
of Corcyra (Fig. 5).4 Corcyra is the island closest to the heel of Italy, and the Temple
of Artemis is generally dated about 580 B.c. The leopard of the pediment, who has
a lion’s mane because the sculptor probably never saw either beast, is also reclining,
with his tail curled up over his right rear haunch. He is carved in limestone. His spots,
or tufts of hair, are represented by concentric circles which cover his body regard-
less of the schematized muscles beneath. His face is also lively and intelligent, with
the pleasingly direct expression of archaic sculpture. It is in mollifying this directness
to something spiritual in its reflectiveness that the Etruscan sculptor has created a
masterpiece in native Italian stone.

If the Etruscan leopard is contemplative, the Etruscan lion is exuberant almost to
the point of boisterousness (Fig. 6).5 He may be described as “a very happy fellow,”
although no doubt the sculptor was moved by notions of ferocity when he carved
him. He was decidedly a winged lion, and the loss of curling feathers as well as lower
has reduced him to the appearance of one big roar. Open mouth, upper and lower
teeth and fleshy jaws have as unnatural contrast (for a roaring lion) a great tongue
which lolls down as far as the chest. There are traces of red paint on this tongue,
suggesting the lion might have been a riot of color in antiquity. The stone is rougher,
redder and more porous than that in which the leopard is carved. Nonetheless, the
sculptor’s feeling for curved surfaces outweighs the stylization of wings and leg
muscles in giving the head and body a vast sense of form as well as spirit.

Two important recent acquisitions by other American museums broaden our
knowledge of these lions from the Etruscan world of 575 to 525 B.c. The first,
contemporary with our lion, is in the Metropolitan Museum of New York and
supplies the missing details of lower forelegs and curled wings (Fig. 7).° He shows
the amount of variation enjoyed by sculptors in carving details of muscles, feathers,
whiskers, jaws, nostrils, haunches and other points of comparison. The artist has
carried off the feeling of ferocity with greater success, a success not due merely to
preservation. The face has an almost reptilian cast to it. The animal is overwhelming.

The second feline resides in Philadelphia, in the University Museum (Fig. 8).7
Chronological arrangement of these winged lions has proven next to impossible
because of the mutilated condition and variance in details of the survivors. Parallels
in archaic Greek sculpture, however, give every indication that the lion now in
Philadelphia must be a generation or more younger than the beasts in Boston and
New York. His eyes are smaller and more natural; his tongue looks more human
or equine (in an effort to look more feline); and his wings begin to approach those

19

9. Middle Corinthian alabastron. Anonymous Gift 60.1465

of South Italian Greek sphinxes in the late archaic period. He is also carved in nenfro
of the same grayish cast as the leopard, although the stone is more pitted.

So far we have been assuming a Greek source for the iconography and design of
the winged lion. Like the leopard, the winged lion reached Etruria through the
intermediary of small, portable objects such as painted vases. He also came from
Corinth, the great Greek commercial center which received, utilized and dissemi-
nated artistic influences and designs from all over Greece, Western Asia Minor and
the ancient Near East. An apt parallel in Corinthian vase-painting of the period
about 590 to 575 B.C. has just entered the collections. It is a large alabastron or ovoid
jar in buff clay with red, black and brown decoration (Fig. 9). A winged lion,
with bird-like legs, walks majestically amid filling ornaments in the form of rosettes
and a large triangle beneath the wing. The mouth is open, and the tongue protrudes
between the fangs in the stylized semblance of a roar similar to that found in the
Etruscan stone lions. The connections between Corinthian and Etruscan lions
illustrated here become all the more cogent when we note that the alabastron was
probably found years ago in the very necropolis of Vulci from which large Etruscan
animals now scattered about the world ultimately derive.

Through Greece the Etruscan winged lions have connections with the older
civilizations of Anatolia and Mesopotamia. Many critics have noted the coincidences

20

of resemblance between these lions and those of Hittite art. The fact that the Etrus-
cans produced beasts like those of the ancient East is due in part to the Eastern
element in their ancestry. It is more immediately due to the fact that “Oriental”
motifs were the rage in Greek art from 750 to $50 B.C., and the Etruscans took over
the Near Eastern stable of fantastic, winged beasts by way of Greek designs.

In the leopard and the lion the Etruscan genius revolves around an ability to take
motifs and designs on small scale from other civilizations and transform them into
a monumental art of great originality, vigor and beauty. These beasts have inner
and outer life of their own. They cannot be mistaken as dull, eclectic repetitions
of Greek inventions. Their size in no way spoils, rather it enhances, their effective-
ness. Etruscan art is now so accepted that we need speak no longer of its identity
separate from the art of the Greeks and its contributions to the later art of Italy and
the Romans. The addition of a monumental leopard and a lion to the collections
in the Museum enriches our civilization in its broadest sense, a civilization so rightly
concerned with the best art in the pasts of all peoples and especially those peoples
whose pasts are in so many respects our own.

CORNELIUS VERMEULE

FOOTNOTES:

I.

Height 2434 inches (0.62m.); length is
33 inches (0.84m.). He appears in The
Illustrated London News, April 29, 1961,

p- 717.

. A. Fairbanks, Catalogue of Greek and

Etruscan Vases in the Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston, Cambridge (Mass.), 1928, I,

no. $35; G. M. A. Richter, Animals in
Greek Sculpture, New York, 1930, fig. 30;
P. Barnard, The Contemporary Mouse,
New York, 1954, p. 38.

. Fairbanks, op. cit. no. 662.
. G. Rodenwaldt, Die Bildwerke des

Artemistempels von Korkyra, Berlin, 1939,
pl. 20.

. His height is 1734 inches (0.45m.), and

his length is 2034 inches (0.52m.).

. Acc. no. 60.11.1; D. von Bothmer,

Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
20, 1961, pp. 181ff., fig. 4; ibid 19, 1960,
pp. 45 (fig.), 60. Andrew Oliver has
kindly supplied photographs and

information.

. Acc. no. §9-24-1; E. Kohler, “An

Etruscan Tomb-Guardian”, Expedition,
Bulletin of the University Museum,
University of Pennsylvania, 2, no. 2,

Winter 1960, pp. 25ff., 2 figs. Miss Kohler
has furnished the photographs and helpful

comment.

. Its height is 854 inches (0.22m.).

D. Adlow, The Christian Science Monitor,
Jan. 9, 1961, p. 5, fig. The vase has been
attributed by J. L. Benson to the
Erlenmeyer Painter.

Norte:

The subject of lions and leopards in
Etruscan art was treated exhaustively by
the late W. L. Brown of Oxford, in a
book The Etruscan Lion, Oxford, 1960.
Chapter IV gives a list of winged lions
then traceable, and Appendix II discusses
“Leopards and Panthers”. The only other
leopard known at the time Brown
compiled his material was recorded by the
early Etruscologist L. Canina, in

L’ Antica Etruria maritima, Rome, 1846-51.
It seems to be now lost. On the basis of
the line engravings, this leopard appears
to have been carved much later than the
animal discussed here.

I wish to thank my colleagues Mary
Comstock and Julia Green for sundry
observations on how felines behave.

2I