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Giacobbe Giusti, Bull-leaping (Ancient Greek: ταυροκαθάψια, taurokathapsia)

Publié par GIACOBBE GIUSTI le 6 décembre 2018
Publié dans: Brennan, Marie (2005); "Bull-Leaping in Bronze Age Crete"; Strange Horizons, Bull-leaping (Ancient Greek: ταυροκαθάψια, taurokathapsia), Collon, D.; "Bull-Leaping in Syria"; International Journal for Egyptian Archaeology and Related Disciplines 4 (1994); pp. 81–88. McInerney, J.; "Bulls and Bull-leaping in the Minoan World"; Exped, Giacobbe Giusti, Bull-leaping (Ancient Greek: ταυροκαθάψια, taurokathapsia), Senza categoria, The bull-leaper, an ivory figurine from the palace of Knossos, Crete. The only complete surviving figure of a larger arrangement of figures. This is the earliest three dimensional representation of th, The Bull-Leaping Fresco from the Great Palace at Knossos, Crete, The Minoan Bull-leaper sculpture at the British Museum.. Tagué : , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Poster un commentaire

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Bull-leaping (Ancient Greek: ταυροκαθάψια, taurokathapsia)

The Minoan Bull-leaper sculpture at the British Museum.

Giacobbe Giusti, Bull-leaping (Ancient Greek: ταυροκαθάψια, taurokathapsia)

The Bull-Leaping Fresco from the Great Palace at Knossos, Crete

Giacobbe Giusti, Bull-leaping (Ancient Greek: ταυροκαθάψια, taurokathapsia)

The bull-leaper, an ivory figurine from the palace of Knossos, Crete. The only complete surviving figure of a larger arrangement of figures. This is the earliest three dimensional representation of the bull leap. It is assumed that thin gold pins were used to suspend the figure over a bull.

Giacobbe Giusti, Bull-leaping (Ancient Greek: ταυροκαθάψια, taurokathapsia)

The Bull-Leaping Fresco from the Great Palace at Knossos, Crete

Giacobbe Giusti, Bull-leaping (Ancient Greek: ταυροκαθάψια, taurokathapsia)

The bull-leaper, an ivory figurine from the palace of Knossos, Crete. The only complete surviving figure of a larger arrangement of figures. This is the earliest three dimensional representation of the bull leap. It is assumed that thin gold pins were used to suspend the figure over a bull.

Bull-leaping(Ancient Greek: ταυροκαθάψια, taurokathapsia[1]) is a form of non-violent bull fighting based on an ancient ritual involving an acrobat leaping over the back of a charging bull (or cow). The sport survives in modern France, usually with cows rather than bulls, as course landaise; and in Spain, with bulls, as recortes. Ritual leaping over bulls is a motif of Middle Bronze Agefigurative art, notably of Minoan Crete, but also found in Hittite Anatolia, the Levant, Bactria and the Indus Valley.[2] It is often interpreted as a depiction of a rite performed in connection with bull worship.

Iconography

Younger (1995) classifies bull-leaping depictions as follows:

  • Type I: the acrobat approaches the bull from the front, grabs the horns, and somersaults backwards
  • Type II: the acrobat approaches the bull from the front, dives over the horns without touching them and pushes himself with his hands from the bull’s back into a backward somersault
  • Type III: the acrobat is depicted in mid-air over the bull’s back, facing the same way as the animal

The Type III depictions are often found in Late Minoan IIIB artwork (14th to 13th centuries BC). Frescoes in Tell el-Dab’a (Avaris, Egypt) dating to the 18th dynasty (16th to 14th centuries BC) show similar designs besides genuinely Egyptian motifs, for which reason they have usually been ascribed to Minoan-taught Egyptian craftsmen (rather than to Minoan ones directly). They could also have been included as palace decorations because the palace was built for an Aegean princess diplomatically married to a Hyksos pharaoh.[3]

Other examples of bull-leaping scenes have been found in Syria, such as a cylinder seal impression found in level VII at Alalakh (Old Babylonian period, 19th or 18th century BC) showing two acrobats performing handstands on the back of a bull, with an ankh sign placed between them, another seal belonging to a servant of Shamshi-Adad I(c. 1800 BC), besides other Syrian examples. Furthermore, a relief vase was discovered in Hüseyindede in 1997, dating to the Hittite Old Kingdom (18th to 15th centuries BC).

Minoan Crete

Giacobbe Giusti, Bull-leaping (Ancient Greek: ταυροκαθάψια, taurokathapsia)

The Minoan Bull-leaper sculpture at the British Museum.

Bull-leaping is thought to have been a key ritual in the religion of the Minoan civilization in Bronze AgeCrete. As in the case of other Mediterranean civilizations, the bull was the subject of veneration and worship. Representation of the Bull at the palace of Knossos is a widespread symbol in the art and decoration of this archaeological site.[4]

The assumption, widely debated by scholars, is that the iconography represents a ritual sport and/or performance in which human athletes literally vaulted over bulls as part of a ceremonial rite. This ritual it hypothesized to have consisted of an acrobatic leap over a bull, such that when the leaper grasped the bull’s horns, the bull would violently jerk its neck upwards, giving the leaper the momentum necessary to perform somersaults and other acrobatic tricks or stunts.[citation needed]

Contemporary bull-leaping

Giacobbe Giusti, Bull-leaping (Ancient Greek: ταυροκαθάψια, taurokathapsia)

The Speed and Daring of Juanito Apiñani in the Ring of Madrid (1815-16). Etching and aquatint by Francisco de Goya.

A « leaper » in 2006

Bull-leaping is still practiced in southwestern France, where it is traditionally known as the course landaise, although usually aggressive cows are used instead of bulls. They are the female stock of the fighting bulls bred for the corrida in Spain. However, once per year bulls are used, in the Festival of Art and Courage. The town of Mont-de-Marsanin Gascony is renowned for its fine sauteurs or ‘leapers’ and écarteurs(‘dodgers’) dressed in brocaded waistcoats. They compete in teams, attempting to use their repertoire evasions and acrobatic leaps to avoid the cow’s charges.

The cow is typically guided by the use of a long rope attached to its horns, so that it runs directly at the performers and is restrained from trampling or goring them should they miss a trick. Although there is little to no risk to the cow in this form of contest, it is a highly dangerous sport for the human participants; a prominent one from Montois, Jean-Pierre Rachou, was killed in 2001 when he fell on his head after being hit by a cow.

The courses landaises are held from March to October on the occasion of festivals in many cities and villages, including Nogaro, Mont-de-Marsan, Dax, Castelnau-d’Auzan, and many other places. There are also national championships.

A similar but even more dangerous tradition of non-violent bull-leaping, recortes, is practiced in some parts of Spain. Specialists toreros(bullfighters), known as recortadores, compete at dodging and leaping over bulls without the use of the cape or sword. Some recortadoresuse a long pole to literally pole-vault over the charging animal, which is both larger than the type used in the French sport, and unrestrained by any guiding rope or similar safety device.

References

  1. ^ The name of a ritual bull-fight held on occasion of a festival in Thessaly (scholion to Pindar, Pythian Odes 2.78), at Smyrna (CIG3212) and at Sinope (CIG 4157).
  2. ^ One argument for the association of Minoan Crete with the Bronze Age culture of the Indus Valley by H. Mode (Indische Frühkulturen und ihre Beziehungen zum Westen, Basel, 1944); since the 1940s, further bull-leaping motives have been discovered in 2nd millennium BC contexts in Bactria and northern Anatolia.
  3. ^ Rohl, David, The Lords of Avaris, Random House, 2007.
  4. ^ Hogan, C. Michael (2007). « Knossos: Fieldnotes ». The Modern Antiquarian.

Bibliography

  • Collon, D.; « Bull-Leaping in Syria »; International Journal for Egyptian Archaeology and Related Disciplines 4 (1994); pp. 81–88.
  • McInerney, J.; « Bulls and Bull-leaping in the Minoan World« ; Expedition Magazine 53:3 (December 2011).
  • Marinatos, Nannó; « The Export Significance of Minoan Bull-leaping Scenes »; International Journal for Egyptian Archaeology and Related Disciplines 4 (1994); pp. 89–93.
  • Marinatos, Nannó; « Minoan Religion: Ritual, Image, and Symbol »; Studies in Comparative Religion; Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1993.
  • Shaw, Maria C.; « The bull-leaping fresco from below the Ramp House at Mycenae: a study in iconography and artistic transmission »; The Annual of the British School at Athens 91 (1996); pp. 167–190
  • Sipahi, Tunç; « New Evidence From Anatolia Regarding Bull Leaping Scenes in the Art of the Aegean and the Near East »; Anatolica 27 (2001); pp. 107–125.
  • Younger, J.; « Bronze Age Representations of Aegean Bull-Games, III »; Aegaeum 12 (1995); pp. 507–46.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bull-leaping

http://www.giacobbegiusti.com

Giacobbe Giusti, Divine Comedy Illustrated by Botticelli

Publié par GIACOBBE GIUSTI le 13 octobre 2018
Publié dans: Dempsey, Charles, "Botticelli, Sandro", Grove Art Online, Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web. 15 May. 2017. subscription required "Ettlingers": Leopold Ettlinger with Helen S. Ettling, Divine Comedy Illustrated by Botticelli, Giacobbe Giusti, Divine Comedy Illustrated by Botticelli, Senza categoria. Tagué : , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Poster un commentaire

Giacobbe Giusti, Divine Comedy Illustrated by Botticelli

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Divine Comedy Illustrated by Botticelli

Giacobbe Giusti, Divine Comedy Illustrated by Botticelli

Giacobbe Giusti, Divine Comedy Illustrated by Botticelli

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Divine Comedy Illustrated by Botticelli
Sandro Botticelli - La Carte de l'Enfer.jpg

The Map of Hell painting by Botticelli is one of the extant ninety-two drawings that were originally included in the illustrated manuscript of Dante’s Divine Comedy commissioned by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici.
Artist Sandro Botticelli
Year c. 1485[1]

Canto XVIII, part of the 8th circle of Hell. Dante and Virgil are each shown 6 times, descending through the 10 chasms of the circle via a ridge. One of only 4 fully coloured pages.[2]

The Divine Comedy Illustrated by Botticelli is a manuscript of the Divine Comedyby Dante, illustrated by 92 full-page pictures by Sandro Botticelli that are considered masterpieces and amongst the best works of the Renaissancepainter. The images are mostly not taken beyond silverpointdrawings, many worked over in ink, but four pages are fully coloured.[1][3]The manuscript eventually disappeared and most of it was rediscovered in the late nineteenth century, having been detected in the collection of the Duke of Hamilton by Gustav Friedrich Waagen, with a few other pages being found in the Vatican Library.[4] Botticelli had earlier produced drawings, now lost, to be turned into engravings for a printed edition, although only the first nineteen of the hundred cantos were illustrated.

In 1882 the main part of the manuscript was added to the collection of the Kupferstichkabinett Berlin (Museum of Prints and Drawings) when the director Friedrich Lippmann bought 85 of Botticelli’s drawings.[4]Lippmann had moved swiftly and quietly, and when the sale was announced there was a considerable outcry in the British press and Parliament.[5] Soon after that, it was revealed that another eight drawings from the same manuscript were in the Vatican Library. The bound drawings had been in the collection of Queen Christina of Sweden and after her death in Rome in 1689, had been bought by Pope Alexander VIII for the Vatican collection. The time of separation of these drawings is unknown. The Map of Hell is in the Vatican collection.[4]

The exact arrangement of text and illustrations is not known, but a vertical arrangement — placing the illustration page on top of the text page — is proposed by Barbara Watts as a more efficient way of combining the text-illustration pairs. A volume designed to open vertically would be approximately 47 cm wide by 64 cm high, and would incorporate both the text and the illustration for each canto on a single page.

The Berlin drawings and those in the Vatican collection were assembled together, for the first time in centuries, in an exhibition showing all 92 of them in Berlin, Rome, and London’s Royal Academy, in 2000 and 2001.[6]

The 1481 printed edition

Engraving by Baldini after Botticelli, from the 1481 book

The drawings in the manuscript were not the first to be created by Botticelli for the Divine Comedy. He also illustrated another Commedia, this time a printed edition with engravings as illustrations, that was published by Nicholo di Lorenzo della Magna in Florence in 1481, and is mentioned by Vasari. Scholars agree that the engravings by Baccio Baldini follow drawn designs by Botticelli, though unfortunately Baldini was unable to render Botticelli’s style very effectively.[7][8]

Botticelli’s attempt to design the illustrations for a printed book was unprecedented for a leading painter, and though it seems to have been something of a flop, this was a role for artists that had an important future.[9] Vasari wrote disapprovingly of the edition: « being of a sophistical turn of mind, he there wrote a commentary on a portion of Dante and illustrated the Inferno which he printed, spending much time over it, and this abstention from work led to serious disorders in his living. »[10] Vasari, who lived when printmaking had become far more important than in Botticelli’s day, never takes it seriously, perhaps because his own paintings did not sell well in reproduction.

The Divine Comedy consists of 100 cantos, and the printed text left space for one engraving for each canto. However, only 19 illustrations were engraved, and most copies of the book have only the first two or three. The first two, and sometimes three, are usually printed on the book page, while the later ones are printed on separate sheets that are pasted into place. This suggests that the production of the engravings lagged behind the printing, and the later illustrations were pasted into the stock of printed and bound books, and perhaps sold to those who had already bought the book. Unfortunately Baldini was neither very experienced nor talented as an engraver, and was unable to express the delicacy of Botticelli’s style in his plates.[11] The project may have been disrupted by Botticelli’s summons to Rome to take part in the project to fresco the Sistine Chapel. He was perhaps away from July 1481 to at the latest May 1482.[12]

Conception and progress of the manuscript

Lucifer’s second drawing by Botticelli from Inferno XXXIV. Lucifer’s picture, spans across two pages, and lies outside the text-illustration structure, unifying the narrative of the series. It also illustrates the full story of Inferno canto XXXIV and shows Lucifer’s geographical position in Hell.[13]

It is often thought that Botticelli’s drawings were commissioned by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, an important patron of the artist. The early 16th-century writer known as the Anonimo Magliabecchiano says that Botticelli painted a Dante on parchment for Lorenzo, but makes it sound as if this was a completed work. Alternatively the drawings we have may have been a different set for Botticelli’s own use and pleasure, which is the conclusion of Ronald Lightbown.[14]

Although the printed and illustrated book was rapidly replacing the traditional and very expensive illuminated manuscript in the last decades of the 15th century, the grandest bibliophiles were still commissioning manuscripts,[15] and continued to do so well into the next century, from artists such as Giulio Clovio (1498–1578), perhaps the last major artist to be mainly a manuscript illuminator.

The drawings illustrate a manuscript of Dante’s Divine Comedy. The entire thematic sequence of each canto was supposed to be illustrated by its own full-page drawing by Botticelli, an unprecedentedly ambitious conception. Normally, by the 15th centuury, a single incident was shown in each framed illustration in illustrated Dantes, as for other narrative works. Botticelli was combining this tradition with another, continuous narrative, where recurrent incidents were shown, usually unframed and in the margin below the text. Thus the principal figures of Dante, Virgil and Beatrice often appear several times in an image.[16]

There are two additional drawings, a map of Hell preceding Inferno, and a double-page drawing of Lucifer that depicts Dante’s and Virgil’s descent to Hell.[1] The text is written on the reverse of the drawings, so that it was on the same page as the next drawing. As was usual, the text was completed before the illustrations were begun, omitting the major capital letters which were to be illuminated.[3]

The exact date of creation of the drawings is unknown but it is agreed that they were produced over a period of several years, and a stylistic development has been detected.[17] Estimates vary between a start around the mid-1480s with the last approximately a decade later,[1]and a period extending between about 1480 and 1505 (by which time Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco was dead).[18] Botticelli never completed the task. Many of the images are not fully drawn and illumination is completed for only four of them. However, the drawings are of such artistry and beauty, that they have been described as « central to Botticelli’s artistic achievement » and no less important than the Primavera.[1] They represent by far the bulk of surviving drawings by Botticelli. Of the small number of other sheets surviving, none relate directly to surviving paintings.[19]

Botticelli is thought to have started the drawings at least roughly following the text sequence. The drawing for Canto I of Inferno has the figures at a larger scale than that used in later cantos, up to the end of the Purgatorio. The earlier drawings for the Inferno are generally the most completed, and the most detailed,[20] but cantos II to VII, XI and XIV are missing, though probably made by Botticelli. We have the text pages for the last cantos, Paradiso, XXXI to XXXIII, but the drawings were never begun.[21] The differing degrees of completion, and the canto numbers and first lines of the matching text inscribed on some sequences of pages but not others, all complicate understanding Botticelli’s progress, and have been extensively debated.[22]

Technique

Paradise, Canto XXX. The vegetation and small figures to the left of the path have been inked over; on the right only the silverpoint stage has been done.

Each page was first drawn with a metal stylus, leaving lines that are now very faint. There are numerous changes evident, which are easy to make in this technique. The next stage was to go over these lines with a pen and black or brown ink. Most of the pages were not taken beyond these stages, which are often found together on a page, with only some areas inked over. Other pages have not yet been inked at all. Only four pages fully received the final stage of colouring in tempera, though others are part-coloured, usually just the main figures. It has been argued that Botticelli, or his patron, came to prefer the uncoloured drawings, and deliberately left the rest, but this is not accepted by most scholars.[23]

Structure and innovations

The illustration for canto XV is part of the third round of Inferno, depicting the punishment of those who acted violently against God, nature, and art.[24]

Botticelli’s manuscripts incorporate several innovations in the way text and images are presented in the volume. In other similar illustrated manuscripts of Dante’s Inferno, multiple illustrations were used to depict the events described in a canto. In addition, most of the space in a page was given to the illustration and associated commentary while the text portion was smaller in comparison. Therefore, a single canto spread over multiple pages. Botticelli’s text and illustration arrangement innovates by presenting the text on a single page in four vertical columns.[25]

In addition, unlike similar works, Botticelli’s manuscript uses but a single illustration per canto, which occupied a whole page, presenting a unified depiction of the sequence of events of a canto in a vertical format. This way, the readers know that when they advance to a new page, they enter the thematic sequence of a new canto.[25] The text of each canto, from left to right, matches, to a high degree,[25] the pictorial representation as the reader views the illustration from the upper left corner and then proceeds downwards. This reflects the vertical structure of the descent of the two poets through the nine circles of Hell. The additional two illustrations of the Map of Hell and Lucifer lie outside this canto-text structure, thus providing an element of continuity which unifies the work.[26] Lucifer’s second drawing by Botticelli from Inferno XXXIV spans across two pages, and lies outside the text-illustration structure, unifying the narrative of the series. It also illustrates the full story of Inferno canto XXXIV and shows Lucifer’s geographical position in Hell.[13]

Botticelli renders vertically the ground planes of the illustrations of the second and third rounds of Inferno. Although the illustrations for the first three rounds depict different imagery, the vertical perspective links them into a single unit. The third round consists of the illustrations for cantos XV, XVI and XVII, which depict the punishment of those who sinned by violence against God, nature and art.[24]

Botticelli uses thirteen drawings to illustrate the eighth circle of Hell, depicting ten chasms that Dante and Virgil descend through a ridge.[2]

Dimensions

Inferno X, with just Dante (in red) and Virgil (in blue) coloured.

Each page of the manuscript was approximately 32 cm high by 47 cm wide. Since the text of each canto was written on a single page and the accompanying illustration was on a separate page, arranging the two pages in a horizontal format would have been impractical as it would be approximately 94 centimetres (37 in) wide. This would entail the readers turning their heads from left to right while trying to connect the text columns on the left to the illustration on the right. A vertical arrangement, stacking the illustration page on top of the text page, is a more efficient way of combining the text-illustration pair; a volume designed to open vertically is a more probable scenario for Botticelli’s manuscript. If the manuscript’s binding were to open vertically, the dimensions would be approximately 47 centimetres (19 in) wide by 64 centimetres (25 in) high, and would incorporate both the text and the illustration on a single page. This would have made reading the text and looking at the drawing of each canto easier and more efficient.[26]

Content location

The Vatican Library has the drawing of the Map Of Hell, and the illustrations for cantos I, IX, X, XII, XIII, XV and XVI of the Inferno. The Map of Hell and the drawing for canto I are drawn on each side of the same goat-skin parchment. The drawings that were in the Berlin museum were separated post-war after the division of Germany, but the collection was re-integrated following reunification.[6] The Berlin Museum houses the rest of the extant illustrations, including the drawing for canto VIII. The sequence of the Inferno drawings for cantos XVII to canto XXX for Paradiso is without gaps. The page for the drawing of canto XXXI appears blank, and the sequence ends with the unfinished drawing for canto XXXII.[3]

The film Botticelli Inferno is based on the history of the illustrated manuscript.

Notes

  1. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e Watts, Barbara J. (1995). « Sandro Botticelli’s Drawings for Dante’s « Inferno »: Narrative Structure, Topography, and Manuscript Design ». Artibus et Historiae. 16 (32): 163. JSTOR 1483567. The drawings’ dates are uncertain, but he probably began them in the mid-1480s, and worked on them for an ex tended period, probably into the mid-1490s.4 Unfortunately, he never finished the project. Many of the extant drawings are not fully fixed in pen, and only four of these contain illumination.5 Nonetheless, Botticelli’s Dante drawings are of such vision and beauty that, no less than the Primavera, they are central to his artistic achievement. In all likelihood, the cycle for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco’s manuscript was Botticelli’s second effort at illustrating Dante, the first being designs for the Florence Commedia, published by Nicholo di Lorenzo della Magna in 1481 [Fig. 2].6 The engravings for Inferno I through XIX that were printed for this edition have long been attributed to Baccio Baldini, who according to Vasari, had no invenzione and relied exclusively on Botticelli for his designs.7 The similarities between these engravings and Botticelli’s lnferno drawings support the assumption that Botticelli made the designs Baldini used. If he did, the engravings are especially significant because they provide a sense of what the lost drawings for Inferno Il-VIII and XIV looked like.
  2. ^ Jump up to:a b Watts, Barbara J. (1995). « Sandro Botticelli’s Drawings for Dante’s « Inferno »: Narrative Structure, Topography, and Manuscript Design ». Artibus et Historiae. 16 (32): 182. JSTOR 1483567. The eighth circle is made up of a series of ten descending chasms (the Malebolge) that Dante and Virgil cross by a continuous ridge, which extends from the top to the bottom of the circle (XVIII:14–18).46 In the thirteen illustrations for this circle, Botticelli consistently placed these ponti on the right side of the composition, breaking the pattern only when the narrative required it or when rendering a chasm for the second time [XVIII-XXXI, Figs. 17–27].
  3. ^ Jump up to:a b c Lippmann, F. DRAWINGS BY SANDRO BOTTICELLI FOR DANTE’S DIVINA COMMEDIA. LAWRENCE AND BULLEN LONDON. p. 16. Not only does the general character of these drawings at once suggest Botticelli, but a careful study of their details confirms the belief that they were entirely executed by him. We recognize throughout the specific character of his art as manifested in his best pictures, […]
  4. ^ Jump up to:a b c Lippmann, F. DRAWINGS BY SANDRO BOTTICELLI FOR DANTE’S DIVINA COMMEDIA. LAWRENCE AND BULLEN LONDON. p. 15. There are 88 sheets in the Berlin group, 85 of them illustrated. These were in an 18th-century binding. The Vatican group is 8 drawings on 7 sheets; the introductory map of Hell is on the same sheet as the first illustration to Canto 1, on the reverse.
  5. Jump up^ Havely, R. N., Dante’s British Public: Readers and Texts, from the Fourteenth Century to the Present, pp. 244–259, 2014, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0199212449, 9780199212446, google books
  6. ^ Jump up to:a b Nigel Reynolds (7 September 2000). « Royal Academy wins battle over Botticellis ». The Daily Telegraph.
  7. Jump up^ Lightbown, pp. 86-89
  8. Jump up^ Lippmann, F. DRAWINGS BY SANDRO BOTTICELLI FOR DANTE’S DIVINA COMMEDIA. LAWRENCE AND BULLEN LONDON. p. 20. It is very probable that Botticelli began the Dante drawings before he went to Rome in 1481. Vasari says that « he illustrated the Inferno, and caused it to be printed ». Now we do possess an edition of the Divine Comedy, printed in Florence in 1481, in which the Inferno is illustrated with nineteen little engravings. The affinity between these plates and Botticelli’s drawings is unmistakable. This edition, published under the direction of Cristophoro Landino, and furnished with his commentary on the poem*, it was originally proposed to illustrate with engravings throughout.
  9. Jump up^ Landau, 35, 38
  10. Jump up^ Vasari, 152
  11. Jump up^ Lightbown, 89; Landau, 108; Dempsey
  12. Jump up^ Lightbown, 90, 94
  13. ^ Jump up to:a b Watts, Barbara J. (1995). « Sandro Botticelli’s Drawings for Dante’s « Inferno »: Narrative Structure, Topography, and Manuscript Design ». Artibus et Historiae. 16 (32): 193. JSTOR 1483567.
  14. Jump up^ Lightbown, 282
  15. Jump up^ Ettlingers, 178-179
  16. Jump up^ Ettlingers, 178-179; Lightbown, 294
  17. Jump up^ Lightbown, 282, 290
  18. Jump up^ Lightbown, 282-290, 295
  19. Jump up^ Lightbown, 296
  20. Jump up^ Lightbown, 290
  21. Jump up^ Lightbown, 280
  22. Jump up^ Lightbown, 280-296
  23. Jump up^ Lightbown, 282; Ettlingers, 179
  24. ^ Jump up to:a b Watts, Barbara J. (1995). « Sandro Botticelli’s Drawings for Dante’s « Inferno »: Narrative Structure, Topography, and Manuscript Design ». Artibus et Historiae. 16 (32): 180. JSTOR 1483567. This formula is maintained in the extant illustrations for the third round, where those violent against God, nature, and art are punished [XV-XVII, Figs. 14–16. […] page. By rendering vertically the planes of the second and third rounds, Botticelli linked their illustrations to that for the first round in which the space actually is perpendicular.
  25. ^ Jump up to:a b c Watts, Barbara J. (1995). « Sandro Botticelli’s Drawings for Dante’s « Inferno »: Narrative Structure, Topography, and Manuscript Design ». Artibus et Historiae. 16 (32): 195–197. JSTOR 1483567.
  26. ^ Jump up to:a b Watts, Barbara J. (1995). « Sandro Botticelli’s Drawings for Dante’s « Inferno »: Narrative Structure, Topography, and Manuscript Design ». Artibus et Historiae. 16 (32): 198. JSTOR 1483567. From here, the step to a volume that opened vertically is almost inevitable when practical and aesthetic concerns are coupled with the nature of Botticelli’s illustrations and the content of Dante’s poem. A conventionally bound manuscript composed of sheets measuring over 32 cm. high and over 47 cm. wide, would, when open, have a breadth of at least 94 cm. […] A manuscript bound so as to open vertically would have none of the aforementioned shortcomings. When open, it would measure approximately 64 cm. in height and only 47 cm. across, a more manageable size. With the text below and the illumination above, the text would be easy to read and the illustration close at hand for detailed scrutiny […] This drawing thus binds the series together: the cosmographical plan of Hell that is presented in its first image is completed in the last, which in turn provides the geographical bridge to the mountain of Purgatory and the second stage of Dante’s journey. This relation between the first and final images of the Inferno confirms a cohesive plan for the manuscript, a plan grounded in the manuscript’s pictorial cycle.

References

  • Dempsey, Charles, « Botticelli, Sandro », Grove Art Online, Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web. 15 May. 2017. subscription required
  • « Ettlingers »: Leopold Ettlinger with Helen S. Ettlinger, Botticelli, 1976, Thames and Hudson (World of Art), ISBN 0500201536
  • Landau, David, in Landau, David, and Parshall, Peter. The Renaissance Print, Yale, 1996, ISBN 0300068832
  • Lightbown, Ronald, Sandro Botticelli: Life and Work, 1989, Thames and Hudson
  • Vasari, selected & ed. George Bull, Artists of the Renaissance, Penguin 1965 (page nos from BCA edn, 1979). Vasari Life on-line (in a different translation)

  • Gentile, Sebastiano (vol 1) and Schulze Altcappenberg, Heinrich-Thomas, Sandro Botticelli: pittore della Divina Commedia, in 2 volumes (facsimile with scholarly introductions), 2000, Skira (vol 1), Scuderie Papali al Quirinale and Royal Academy of Arts (vol 2)
  • Plazzotta, C. (2001). Review: « Botticelli and Dante: Berlin, Rome and London », The Burlington Magazine, 143(1177), 239–241. JSTOR
  • Schulze Altcappenberg, Heinrich-Thomas, Sandro Botticelli: The Drawings for Dante’s Divine Comedy, 2000, Royal Academy/Harry N Abrams, catalogue for the exhibition, ISBN 0810966336, 9780810966338

 

 

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Roman mythology

Publié par GIACOBBE GIUSTI le 10 octobre 2018
Publié dans: Beard, Mary. 1993. "Looking (Harder) for Roman Myth: Dumézil, Declamation, and the Problems of Definition." In Mythos in Mythenloser Gesellschaft: Das Paradigma Roms. Edited by Fritz Graf, 44–64., Giacobbe Giusti, Roman mythology, Roman mythology, Roman mythology is the body of traditional stories pertaining to ancient Rome's legendary origins and religious system, as represented in the literature and visual arts of the Romans, Senza categoria. Tagué : , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Poster un commentaire

Giacobbe Giusti, Roman mythology

Giacobbe Giusti, Roman mythology

Giacobbe Giusti, Roman mythology

Giacobbe Giusti, Roman mythology

Giacobbe Giusti, Roman mythology

Giacobbe Giusti, Roman mythology

Romulus and Remus, the Lupercal, Father Tiber, and the Palatine on a relief from a pedestal dating to the reign of Trajan(AD 98–117)

Roman mythology is the body of traditional stories pertaining to ancient Rome‘s legendary origins and religious system, as represented in the literature and visual arts of the Romans. « Roman mythology » may also refer to the modern study of these representations, and to the subject matter as represented in the literature and art of other cultures in any period.

The Romans usually treated their traditional narratives as historical, even when these have miraculous or supernatural elements. The stories are often concerned with politics and morality, and how an individual’s personal integrity relates to his or her responsibility to the community or Roman state. Heroism was an important theme. When the stories illuminate Roman religious practices, they are more concerned with ritual, augury, and institutions than with theology or cosmogony.[1]

The study of Roman religion and myth is complicated by the early influence of Greek religion on the Italian peninsula during Rome’s protohistory, and by the later artistic imitation of Greek literary modelsby Roman authors. In matters of theology, the Romans were curiously eager to identify their own gods with those of the Greeks (interpretatio graeca), and to reinterpret stories about Greek deities under the names of their Roman counterparts.[2] Rome’s early myths and legends also have a dynamic relationship with Etruscan religion, less documented than that of the Greeks.

While Roman mythology may lack a body of divine narratives as extensive as that found in Greek literature,[3] Romulus and Remussuckling the she-wolf is as famous as any image from Greek mythology except for the Trojan Horse.[4] Because Latin literature was more widely known in Europe throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, the interpretations of Greek myths by the Romans often had a greater influence on narrative and pictorial representations of « classical mythology » than Greek sources. In particular, the versions of Greek myths in Ovid‘s Metamorphoses, written during the reign of Augustus, came to be regarded as canonical.

The nature of Roman myth

Giacobbe Giusti, Roman mythology

In this wall painting from Pompeii, Venus looks on while the physician Iapyx tends to the wound of her son, Aeneas; the tearful boy is her grandson Ascanius, also known as Iulus, legendary ancestor[citation needed] of Julius Caesar and the Julio-Claudian dynasty

Because ritual played the central role in Roman religion that myth did for the Greeks, it is sometimes doubted that the Romans had much of a native mythology. This perception is a product of Romanticism and the classical scholarship of the 19th century, which valued Greek civilization as more « authentically creative. »[5]From the Renaissance to the 18th century, however, Roman myths were an inspiration particularly for European painting.[6] The Roman tradition is rich in historical myths, or legends, concerning the foundation and rise of the city. These narratives focus on human actors, with only occasional intervention from deities but a pervasive sense of divinely ordered destiny. In Rome’s earliest period, history and myth have a mutual and complementary relationship.[7] As T. P. Wiseman notes:

The Roman stories still matter, as they mattered to Dantein 1300 and Shakespeare in 1600 and the founding fathers of the United States in 1776. What does it take to be a free citizen? Can a superpower still be a republic? How does well-meaning authority turn into murderous tyranny?[6]

Major sources for Roman myth include the Aeneid of Vergil and the first few books of Livy‘s history as well as Dionysius’ s Roman Antiquities. Other important sources are the Fasti of Ovid, a six-book poem structured by the Roman religious calendar, and the fourth book of elegies by Propertius. Scenes from Roman myth also appear in Roman wall painting, coins, and sculpture, particularly reliefs.

Founding myths

Main article: Founding of Rome

The Aeneid and Livy’s early history are the best extant sources for Rome’s founding myths. Material from Greek heroic legend was grafted onto this native stock at an early date. The Trojan prince Aeneas was cast as husband of Lavinia, daughter of King Latinus, patronymical ancestor of the Latini, and therefore through a convoluted revisionist genealogy as forebear of Romulus and Remus. By extension, the Trojans were adopted as the mythical ancestors of the Roman people.[8]

Other myths

Mucius Scaevola in the Presence of Lars Porsenna (early 1640s) by Matthias Stom

Giacobbe Giusti, Roman mythology

Polyphemus hears of the arrival of Galatea; ancient Roman fresco painted in the « Fourth Style » of Pompeii (45-79 AD)

The characteristic myths of Rome are often political or moral, that is, they deal with the development of Roman government in accordance with divine law, as expressed by Roman religion, and with demonstrations of the individual’s adherence to moral expectations (mos maiorum) or failures to do so.

Religion and myth

Main article: Religion in ancient Rome

Narratives of divine activity played a more important role in the system of Greek religious belief than among the Romans, for whom ritual and cult were primary. Although Roman religion did not have a basis in scriptures and exegesis, priestly literature was one of the earliest written forms of Latin prose.[14] The books (libri) and commentaries (commentarii) of the College of Pontiffs and of the augurs contained religious procedures, prayers, and rulings and opinions on points of religious law.[15] Although at least some of this archived material was available for consultation by the Roman senate, it was often occultum genus litterarum,[16] an arcane form of literature to which by definition only priests had access.[17] Prophecies pertaining to world history and to Rome’s destiny turn up fortuitously at critical junctures in history, discovered suddenly in the nebulous Sibylline books, which Tarquin the Proud (according to legend) purchased in the late 6th century BC from the Cumaean Sibyl. Some aspects of archaic Roman religion survived in the lost theological works of the 1st-century BC scholar Varro, known through other classical and Christian authors.

Capitoline Triad

The earliest pantheon included Janus, Vesta, and a leading so-called Archaic Triad of Jupiter, Mars, and Quirinus, whose flamens were of the highest order. According to tradition, Numa Pompilius, the Sabine second king of Rome, founded Roman religion; Numa was believed to have had as his consort and adviser a Roman goddess or nymph of fountains and of prophecy, Egeria. The Etruscan-influenced Capitoline Triad of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva later became central to official religion, replacing the Archaic Triad — an unusual example within Indo-European religion of a supreme triad formed of two female deities and only one male. The cult of Diana became established on the Aventine Hill, but the most famous Roman manifestation of this goddess may be Diana Nemorensis, owing to the attention paid to her cult by J.G. Frazer in the mythographical classic The Golden Bough.

Punishment of Ixion: in the center stands Mercury holding the caduceus, and on the right Juno sits on her throne. Behind her Iris stands and gestures. On the left Vulcan (the blondfigure) stands behind the wheel, manning it, with Ixion already tied to it. Nephele sits at Mercury’s feet. – Roman fresco from the eastern wall of the triclinium in the House of the Vettii, Pompeii, Fourth Style (60-79 AD).

The gods represented distinctly the practical needs of daily life, and Ancient Romans scrupulously accorded them the appropriate rites and offerings. Early Roman divinities included a host of « specialist gods » whose names were invoked in the carrying out of various specific activities. Fragments of old ritual accompanying such acts as plowing or sowing reveal that at every stage of the operation a separate deity was invoked, the name of each deity being regularly derived from the verb for the operation. Tutelary deitieswere particularly important in ancient Rome.

Thus, Janus and Vesta guarded the door and hearth, the Laresprotected the field and house, Pales the pasture, Saturn the sowing, Ceres the growth of the grain, Pomona the fruit, and Consus and Opsthe harvest. Even the majestic Jupiter, the ruler of the gods, was honored for the aid his rains might give to the farms and vineyards. In his more encompassing character he was considered, through his weapon of lightning, the director of human activity. Due to his widespread domain, the Romans regarded him as their protector in their military activities beyond the borders of their own community. Prominent in early times were the gods Mars and Quirinus, who were often identified with each other. Mars was a god of war; he was honored in March and October. Modern scholars see Quirinus as the patron of the armed community in time of peace.

The 19th-century scholar Georg Wissowa[18] thought that the Romans distinguished two classes of gods, the di indigetes and the di novensides or novensiles: the indigetes were the original gods of the Roman state, their names and nature indicated by the titles of the earliest priests and by the fixed festivals of the calendar, with 30 such gods honored by special festivals; the novensides were later divinities whose cults were introduced to the city in the historical period, usually at a known date and in response to a specific crisis or felt need. Arnaldo Momigliano and others, however, have argued that this distinction cannot be maintained.[19] During the war with Hannibal, any distinction between « indigenous » and « immigrant » gods begins to fade, and the Romans embraced diverse gods from various cultures as a sign of strength and universal divine favor.[20]

Foreign gods

Giacobbe Giusti, Roman mythology

Mithras in a Roman wall painting

The absorption of neighboring local gods took place as the Roman state conquered neighboring territories. The Romans commonly granted the local gods of a conquered territory the same honors as the earlier gods of the Roman state religion. In addition to Castor and Pollux, the conquered settlements in Italy seem to have contributed to the Roman pantheon Diana, Minerva, Hercules, Venus, and deities of lesser rank, some of whom were Italic divinities, others originally derived from the Greek culture of Magna Graecia. In 203 BC, Rome imported the cult object embodying Cybele from Pessinus in Phrygia and welcomed its arrival with due ceremony. Both Lucretius ad Catullus, poets contemporary in the mid-1st century BC, offer disapproving glimpses of Cybele’s wildly ecstatic cult.

In some instances, deities of an enemy power were formally invited through the ritual of evocatio to take up their abode in new sanctuaries at Rome.

Communities of foreigners ( peregrini) and former slaves (libertini)continued their own religious practices within the city. In this way Mithras came to Rome and his popularity within the Roman armyspread his cult as far afield as Roman Britain. The important Roman deities were eventually identified with the more anthropomorphicGreek gods and goddesses, and assumed many of their attributes and myths.

References

  1. Jump up^ John North, Roman Religion (Cambridge University Press, 2000) pp. 4ff.
  2. Jump up^ North, Roman Religion, pp. 4–5.
  3. Jump up^ North, Roman Religion, p. 4.
  4. Jump up^ T. P. Wiseman, Remus: A Roman Myth (Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. xiii.
  5. Jump up^ T. P. Wiseman, The Myths of Rome (University of Exeter Press, 2004), preface (n.p.).
  6. ^ Jump up to:ab Wiseman, The Myths of Rome, preface.
  7. Jump up^ Alexandre Grandazzi, The Foundation of Rome: Myth and History(Cornell University Press, 1997), pp. 45–46.
  8. Jump up^ See also Lusus Troiae.
  9. Jump up^ J.N. Bremmer and N.M. Horsfall, Roman Myth and Mythography(University of London Institute of Classical Studies, 1987), pp. 49–62.
  10. Jump up^ Bremmer and Horsfall, pp. 63–75.
  11. Jump up^ Bremmer and Horsfall, pp. 76–88.
  12. Jump up^ Bremmer and Horsfall, pp. 89–104; Larissa Bonfante, Etruscan Life and Afterlife: A Handbook of Etruscan Studies (Wayne State University Press, 1986), p. 25.
  13. Jump up^ Bremmer and Horsfall, pp. 105–111.
  14. Jump up^ Moses Hadas, A History of Latin Literature (Columbia University Press, 1952), p. 15 online.
  15. Jump up^ C.O. Brink, Horace on Poetry. Epistles Book II: The Letters to Augustus and Florus (Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 64 online.
  16. Jump up^ Cicero, De domo sua 138.
  17. Jump up^ Jerzy Linderski, « The libri reconditi, » Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 89 (1985) 207–234.
  18. Jump up^ Georg Wissowa, De dis Romanorum indigetibus et novensidibus disputatio (1892), full text (in Latin) online.
  19. Jump up^ Arnaldo Momigliano, « From Bachofen to Cumont, » in A.D. Momigliano: Studies on Modern Scholarship (University of California Press, 1994), p. 319; Franz Altheim, A History of Roman Religion, as translated by Harold Mattingly (London, 1938), pp. 110–112; Mary Beard, J.A. North and S.R.F. Price. Religions of Rome: A History(Cambridge University Press, 1998), vol. 1, p. 158, note 7.
  20. Jump up^ William Warde Fowler, The Religious Experience of the Roman People (London, 1922) pp. 157 and 319; J.S. Wacher, The Roman World (Routledge, 1987, 2002), p. 751.

Sources

  • Beard, Mary. 1993. « Looking (Harder) for Roman Myth: Dumézil, Declamation, and the Problems of Definition. » In Mythos in Mythenloser Gesellschaft: Das Paradigma Roms. Edited by Fritz Graf, 44–64. Stuttgart, Germany: Teubner.
  • Braund, David, and Christopher Gill, eds. 2003. Myth, History, and Culture in Republican Rome: Studies in Honour of T. P. Wiseman.Exeter, UK: Univ. of Exeter Press.
  • Cameron, Alan. 2004. Greek Mythography in the Roman World.Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
  • Dumézil, Georges. 1996. Archaic Roman Religion. Rev. ed. Translated by Philip Krapp. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.
  • Fox, Matthew. 2011. “The Myth of Rome” In A Companion to Greek Mythology. Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World. Literature and Culture.Edited by Ken Dowden and Niall Livingstone. Chichester; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
  • Gardner, Jane F. 1993. Roman Myths: The Legendary Past. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press.
  • Grandazzi, Alexandre. 1997. The Foundation of Rome: Myth and History. Translated by Jane Marie Todd. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press.
  • Hall, Edith 2013. « Pantomime: Visualising Myth in the Roman Empire. » In Performance in Greek and Roman Theatre. Edited by George Harrison and George William Mallory, 451-743. Leiden; Boston: Brill.
  • Miller, Paul Allen. 2013. « Mythology and the Abject in Imperial Satire. » In Classical Myth and Psychoanalysis: Ancient and Modern Stories of the Self. Edited by Vanda Zajko and Ellen O’Gorman, 213-230. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Newby, Zahra. 2012. « The Aesthetics of Violence: Myth and Danger in Roman Domestic Landscapes. » Classical Antiquity 31.2: 349-389.
  • Wiseman, T. P. 2004. The Myths of Rome. Exeter: Univ. of Exeter Press.
  • Woodard, Roger D. 2013. Myth, Ritual, and the Warrior in Roman and Indo-European Antiquity. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_mythology

http://www.giacobbegiusti.com

Giacobbe Giusti, Etruscan religion

Publié par GIACOBBE GIUSTI le 22 septembre 2018
Publié dans: Bonfante, Giuliano; Bonfante, Larissa (2002). The Etruscan Language: an Introduction. Manchester: University of Manchester Press. ISBN 0-7190-5540-7. Bonnefoy, Yves (1992). Roman and European My, Etruscan mural of Typhon, from Tarquinia, Etruscan religion, Giacobbe Giusti, Etruscan religion, Senza categoria, The Mars of Todi, a life-sized Etruscan bronze sculpture of a soldier making a votive offering, most likely to Laran, the Etruscan god of war, late 5th to early 4th century BC. Tagué : , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Poster un commentaire

Giacobbe Giusti, Etruscan religion

Etruscan mural of Typhon, from Tarquinia

Giacobbe Giusti, Etruscan religion

The Mars of Todi, a life-sized Etruscan bronze sculpture of a soldier making a votive offering, most likely to Laran, the Etruscan god of war, late 5th to early 4th century BC

Giacobbe Giusti, Etruscan religion

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Etruscan religion

ara3

Ara Etrusca di Pieve a Socana

Giacobbe Giusti, Etruscan religion

ara2

Giacobbe Giusti, Etruscan religion

Etruscan mural of Typhon, from Tarquinia

Giacobbe Giusti, Etruscan religion

Reconstruction of an Etruscan temple, Museo di Villa Giulia, Rome, which is heavily influenced by studies of the Temple of Apollo at Portonaccio (Veio)

Etruscan religion comprises a set of stories, beliefs, and religious practices of the Etruscan civilization, originating in the 7th century BC from the preceding Iron Age Villanovan culture, heavily influenced by the mythology of ancient Greeceand Phoenicia, and sharing similarities with concurrent Roman mythology and religion. As the Etruscan civilization was assimilated into the Roman Republic in the 4th century BC, the Etruscan religion and mythology were partially incorporated into classical Roman culture, following the Roman tendency to absorb some of the local gods and customs of conquered lands.

Beliefs

The Etruscan system of belief was an immanent polytheism; that is, all visible phenomena were considered to be manifestations of divinepower, and that power was embodied in deities who acted continually on the world but could be dissuaded or persuaded by mortal men.

Long after the assimilation of the Etruscans, Seneca the Youngersaid[1] that the difference between the Romans and the Etruscans was that

Whereas we believe lightning to be released as a result of the collision of clouds, they believe that the clouds collide so as to release lightning: for as they attribute all to deity, they are led to believe not that things have a meaning insofar as they occur, but rather that they occur because they must have a meaning.

Spirits and deities

Main article: List of Etruscan mythological figures
Main article: List of Etruscan names for Greek heroes
Giacobbe Giusti, Etruscan religion

The Mars of Todi, a life-sized Etruscan bronze sculpture of a soldier making a votive offering, most likely to Laran, the Etruscan god of war, late 5th to early 4th century BC

Around the mun or muni, or tombs[citation needed], were the man or mani (Latin Manes), the souls of the ancestors. In iconography after the 5th century BC, the deceased are shown traveling to the underworld.[2] In several instances of Etruscan art, such as in the François Tombin Vulci, a spirit of the dead is identified by the term hinthial, literally « (one who is) underneath ».

A god was called an ais (later eis), which in the plural is aisar. The abode of a god was a fanu or luth, a sacred place, such as a favi, a grave or temple. There, one would need to make a fler (plural flerchva), or « offering ».

Three layers of deities are portrayed in Etruscan art. One appears to be lesser divinities of an indigenous origin: Catha and Usil, the sun; Tivr, the moon; Selvans, a civil god; Turan, the goddess of love; Laran, the god of war; Leinth, the goddess of death; Maris, Thalna, Turmsand the god Fufluns, whose name is related in some unknown way to the city of Populonia and the populus Romanus.

Ruling over them were higher deities that seem to reflect the Indo-European system: Tin or Tinia, the sky, Uni his wife (Juno), and Cel, the earth goddess.

As a third layer, the Greek gods were adopted by the Etruscan system during the Etruscan Orientalizing Period of 750/700-600 BC.[3]Examples are Aritimi (Artemis), Menrva (Minerva; Latin equivalent of Athena), and Pacha (Bacchus; Latin equivalent of Dionysus), and over time the primary trinity became Tinia, Uni and Menrva.

Seers and divinations

The Etruscans believed their religion had been revealed to them by seers,[4] the two main ones being Tages, a childlike figure born from tilled land who was immediately gifted with prescience, and Vegoia, a female figure.

The Etruscans believed in intimate contact with divinity.[5] They did nothing without proper consultation with the gods and signs from them.[6] These practices were taken over in total by the Romans.

Etrusca Disciplina

The Etruscan scriptures were a corpus of texts termed the Etrusca Disciplina. This name appears in Valerius Maximus,[7] and Marcus Tullius Cicero refers to a disciplina in his writings on the subject.

Massimo Pallottino summarizes the known (but non-extant) scriptures as the Libri Haruspicini, containing the theory and rules of divination from animal entrails; the Libri Fulgurales, describing divination from lightning strikes; and the Libri Rituales. The last was composed of the Libri Fatales, detailing the religiously correct methods of founding cities and shrines, draining fields, formulating laws and ordinances, measuring space and dividing time; the Libri Acherontici, dealing with the hereafter; and the Libri Ostentaria, containing rules for interpreting prodigies. The revelations of the prophet Tages were given in the Libri Tagetici, which included the Libri Haruspicini and the Acherontici, and those of the prophetess Vegoia in the Libri Vegoici, which included the Libri Fulgurales and part of the Libri Rituales.[8]

These works did not present prophecies or scriptures in the ordinary sense: the Etrusca Disciplina foretold nothing itself. The Etruscans appear to have had no systematic ethics or religion and no great visions. Instead they concentrated on the problem of the will of the gods: questioning why, if the gods created the universe and humanity and have a will and a plan for everyone and everything in it, they did not devise a system for communicating that will in a clear manner.

The Etruscans accepted the inscrutability of their gods’ wills. They did not attempt to rationalize or explain divine actions or formulate any doctrines of the gods’ intentions. As answer to the problem of ascertaining the divine will, they developed an elaborate system of divination; that is, they believed the gods offer a perpetual stream of signs in the phenomena of daily life, which if read rightly can direct humanity’s affairs. These revelations may not be otherwise understandable and may not be pleasant or easy, but are perilous to doubt.

The Etrusca Disciplina therefore was mainly a set of rules for the conduct of all sorts of divination; Pallottino calls it a religious and political « constitution »: it does not dictate what laws shall be made or how humans are to behave, but rather elaborates rules for asking the gods these questions and receiving answers.

Cicero said[9]

For a hasty acceptance of an erroneous opinion is discreditable in any case, and especially so in an inquiry as to how much weight should be given to auspices, to sacred rites, and to religious observances; for we run the risk of committing a crime against the gods if we disregard them, or of becoming involved in old women’s superstition if we approve them.

He then quipped, regarding divination from the singing of frogs:

Who could suppose that frogs had this foresight? And yet they do have by nature some faculty of premonition, clear enough of itself, but too dark for human comprehension.

Priests and officials

Giacobbe Giusti, Etruscan religion

Rare Etruscan fanu located at Orvieto.

Divinatory inquiries according to discipline were conducted by priests whom the Romans called haruspices or sacerdotes; Tarquinii had a college of 60 of them.[8] The Etruscans, as evidenced by the inscriptions, used several words: capen (Sabinecupencus), maru (Umbrian maron-), eisnev, hatrencu (priestess). They called the art of haruspicy ziχ neθsrac.

A special magistrate, the cechase, looked after the cecha or rath, sacred things. Every man, however, had his religious responsibilities, which were expressed in an alumnathe or slecaches, a sacred society. No public event was conducted without the netsvis, the haruspex, or his female equivalent, the nethsra, who would read the bumps on the liver of a properly sacrificed sheep. We have a model of a liver made of bronze, whose religious significance is still a matter of heated debate, marked into sections which perhaps are meant to explain what a bump in that region would mean.

Afterlife

Etruscan beliefs concerning the hereafter appear to be an amalgam of influences. The Etruscans shared general early Mediterranean beliefs, such as the Egyptian belief that survival and prosperity in the hereafter depend on the treatment of the deceased’s remains.[10] Etruscan tombs imitated domestic structures and were characterized by spacious chambers, wall paintings and grave furniture. In the tomb, especially on the sarcophagus (examples shown below), was a representation of the deceased in his or her prime, often with a spouse. Not everyone had a sarcophagus; sometimes the deceased was laid out on a stone bench. As the Etruscans practiced mixed inhumation and cremation rites (the proportion depending on the period), cremated ashes and bones might be put into an urn in the shapes of a house or a representation of the deceased.

In addition to the world still influenced by terrestrial affairs was a transmigrational world beyond the grave, patterned after the Greek Hades[citation needed]. It was ruled by Aita, and the deceased was guided there by Charun, the equivalent of Death, who was blue and wielded a hammer. The Etruscan Hades was populated by Greek mythological figures and a few such as Tuchulcha, of composite appearance.

Roman Conquest

After the Etruscan defeat in the Roman–Etruscan Wars, the remaining Etruscan culture began to be assimilated into the Roman. The Roman Senate adopted key elements of the Etruscan religion, which were perpetuated by haruspices and noble Roman families who claimed Etruscan descent, long after the general population had forgotten the language. However, in the last years of the Roman Republic the religion began to fall out of favor and was satirized by such notable public figures as Marcus Tullius Cicero. The Julio-Claudians, especially Claudius, who claimed a remote Etruscan descent, maintained a knowledge of the language and religion for a short time longer[11], but this practice soon ceased. A number of canonical works in the Etruscan language survived until the middle of the first millennium AD, but were destroyed by the ravages of time, decree of the Roman Senate, and by fire.[citation needed]

Sources

The mythology is evidenced by a number of sources in different media; for example, representations on large numbers of pottery, inscriptions and engraved scenes on the Praenestine cistae (ornate boxes; see under Etruscan language) and on specula (ornate hand mirrors). Currently some two dozen fascicles of the Corpus Speculorum Etruscorum have been published. Specifically Etruscan mythological and cult figures appear in the Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae.[12] Etruscan inscriptions have recently been given a more authoritative presentation by Helmut Rix, Etruskische Texte.[13]

Notes

  1. Jump up^ Seneca the Younger. « II.32.2 ». Naturales Quaestiones.
  2. Jump up^ Krauskopf, I. 2006. « The Grave and Beyond. » The Religion of the Etruscans. edited by N. de Grummond and E. Simon. Austin: University of Texas Press. p. 73-75.
  3. Jump up^ Dates from De Grummond & Simon (2006), p. vii.
  4. Jump up^ Cary, M.; Scullard, H. H. (1979). A History of Rome (3rd ed.). p. 24. ISBN 0-312-38395-9.
  5. Jump up^ The religiosity of the Etruscans most clearly manifested itself in the so-called ‘discipline’, that complex of rules regulating relations between men and gods. Its main basis was the scrupulous search for the divine will by all available means; … the reading and interpretation of animal entrails, especially the liver … and the interpretation of lightning. (Pallottino 1975, p. 143)
  6. Jump up^ Livius, Titus. « V.1 ». History of Rome. …a people more than any others dedicated to religion, the more as they excelled in practicing it.
  7. Jump up^ Maximus, Valerius. « 1.1 ». Factorum et Dictorum Memorabilia.
  8. ^ Jump up to:a b Pallottino 1975, p. 154
  9. Jump up^ De Divinatione, section 4.
  10. Jump up^ Pallottino 1975, p. 148
  11. Jump up^ Suetonius, Life of Claudius, 42
  12. Jump up^ « An illustrated lexicon about the ancient myths ». Foundation for the Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC). 2009. Retrieved 21 June 2009.
  13. Jump up^ Rix, Helmut, ed. (1991). Etruskische Texte. ScriptOralia (in German and Etruscan). Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag. ISBN 3-8233-4240-1. 2 vols.

References

  • Bonfante, Giuliano; Bonfante, Larissa (2002). The Etruscan Language: an Introduction. Manchester: University of Manchester Press. ISBN 0-7190-5540-7.
  • Bonnefoy, Yves (1992). Roman and European Mythologies. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-06455-7. Translated by Wendy Doniger, Gerald Honigsblum.
  • De Grummond; Nancy Thomson (2006). Etruscan Mythology, Sacred History and Legend: An Introduction. University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology. ISBN 1-931707-86-3.
  • De Grummond, Nancy Thomson; Simon, Erika, eds. (2006). The Religion of the Etruscans. Austin: University of Texas Press. ISBN 0-292-70687-1.
  • Dennis, George (1848). The Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria. London: John Murray. Available in the Gazetteer of Bill Thayer’s Website at [1]
  • Pallottino, M. (1975). Ridgway, David, ed. The Etruscans. Translated by Cremina, J (Revised and Enlarged ed.). Bloomington & London: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-32080-1.
  • Richardson, Emeline Hill (1976) [1964]. The Etruscans: Their Art and Civilization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-71234-6.
  • Rykwert, Joseph (1988). The Idea of a Town: the Anthropology of Urban Form in Rome, Italy and the Ancient World. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-68056-4.
  • Swaddling, Judith; Bonfante, Larissa (2006). Etruscan Myths. University of Texas Press. ISBN 0-292-70606-5.
  • Thulin, Carl (1906). Die Götter des Martianus Capella und der Bronzeleber von Piacenza (in German). Alfred Töpelmann.

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