For a civilization that helped shape ancient Italy, the Etruscans have long been stuck in Rome’s shadow. San Francisco’s Legion of Honor is changing that with a sweeping exhibition of more than 150 treasures, and the clock is ticking with the show set to close September 20.
The Etruscans: From the Heart of Ancient Italy opened May 2 and is curated by Renée Dreyfus, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco’s curator in charge of ancient art. In a recent San Mateo Daily Journal video, Dreyfus discusses organizing a display built from loans representing 28 museums.
A Civilization Rome Couldn’t Ignore
The Etruscans flourished in what is now central Italy from roughly the ninth to the second centuries BCE, long before Rome became the dominant power in the region. Exhibition materials from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco frame them as major contributors to architecture, engineering and art whose public reputation was later eclipsed by ancient Greece and Rome.
That imbalance is the show’s central provocation. The exhibition makes the case that ideas commonly associated with Rome, including temple design, hydraulic engineering and winemaking—have deeper Etruscan roots, giving visitors a rather different prequel to the Roman story.
Gold, Bronze And A Very Important Linen Book
The galleries bring together bronze and terracotta sculpture, gold jewelry, painted ceramics, architectural fragments and funerary objects. The San Francisco Chronicle highlighted the Liber Linteus, a linen manuscript used as a religious calendar, along with a reclining sarcophagus and other rare works.
Many pieces reveal how Etruscan elites prepared for the afterlife, but the exhibition is not limited to tomb treasures. As KQED’s review notes, the show also includes votive figures, models used in divination and small bronze statues recovered from the sacred waters of San Casciano dei Bagni.
San Francisco Gets A Rare Etruscan Spotlight
The exhibition arrives after years of research and new archaeological discoveries, with loans from institutions including the Vatican’s Gregorian Etruscan Museum and Italy’s National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia. A related symposium organized by the Ancient Art Council describes the exhibition as the first major U.S. presentation of Etruscan culture in more than two decades.
That makes the Legion of Honor show more than a collection of beautiful objects; it is an attempt to move the Etruscans from ancient history’s supporting cast into the main narrative. With roughly seven weeks remaining, San Francisco has a limited window to see a civilization that Rome borrowed from extensively but rarely gets credited.
The Etruscans: From the Heart of Ancient Italy remains on view through September 20 at the Legion of Honor. The Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco lists the exhibition as one of the most comprehensive U.S. presentations devoted to Etruscan culture in recent decades.
