Last month, the Italian Ministry of Culture announced it had acquired fresco panels belonging to the François Tomb, a lavishly decorated chamber from the ancient Etruscan city of Vulci. Those panels, among the most significant works of ancient Etruscan art ever discovered, have now gone on permanent display at National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia in Rome.
The Italian state spent a reported €15 million ($17 million) to purchase the frescoes from the Torlonia family—famed for their unparalleled collection of Roman marbles—on whose land the tomb was found more than a century and a half ago in 1857 by Italian archaeologist Alessandro François.
A captive Trojan soldier from the François Tomb. Photo: courtesy the Italian Ministry of Culture.
Although the Etruscans had a writing system, little evidence of it survives owing to material decay and deliberate erasure by the Romans, leaving their elaborate tombs as a key source for understanding the Central Italian civilization. The frescoes from the François Tomb were painted between 340 B.C.E. and 240 B.C.E. and include moments from Etruscan history and scenes from Greek mythology—they were connected to Greek culture predominately through contact with Greek city-state colonies in southern Italy.
In one painted scene, Etruscans slaughter their enemies from Rome and neighboring cities. In another, Achilles sacrifices Trojan prisoners destined for the funeral pyre of his fallen companion Patroclus. In a third, an Etruscan nobleman is freed by Mastarna, also known as Servius Tullius, a 6th-century B.C.E. king of Rome.
Vel Saties a 4th-century B.C.E Etruscan aristocrat. Photo: courtesy the Italian Ministry of Culture.
The frescoes are on view at the museum alongside jewels and vases that François found inside the tomb. Though now scattered across museum collections, the works have been loaned back for this opening exhibition.
“The François Tomb is a testament to the identity of Etruscan civilization and the central role it played in the cultural formation of ancient Italy,” Italy’s minister of culture Alessandro Giuli said in a statement. “This acquisition confirms the Ministry’s commitment to investing in the protection, enhancement, and accessibility of cultural heritage as a common good and a tool for shared knowledge.”
The Italian ministry has been on something of a buying spree in recent months. In February, it paid $14.9 million for Antonello da Messina’s Ecce Homo (c. 1430 to 1479) at Sotheby’s, and later shelled out $35 million for a long-hidden portrait of Maffeo Barberini, the future Urban VIII, by Caravaggio, which is now on display at the Palazzo Barberini, the Pope’s familial haunt.
