Max Kunze

Die Etrusker Max Kunze

As the success of the exhibitions in Hamburg and Bonn in recent years have shown, the art and culture of the Etruscans fascinates to this day. In contrast to these exhibitions, the Winckelmann-Museum is devoted to the discovery and exploration of the often enigmatic art of the Etruscans since the 18th Century. Due to the extensive publication of the Etruscan monuments of Thomas Dempster and Francesco Gori, and through the founding of the Etruscan Academy in Cortona, their investigation has experienced a great boom. In his Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (1764), Winckelmann for the first time tried to describe the development of Etruscan art and its stylistic periods. Many questions were asked during this period: Whether everything that was found in Tuscany was in fact Etruscan; what the origin was of Greek vases found in Etruria and Campania, previously thought to be Etruscan; and the question of the differences between the archaic style of the Greeks, the Etruscans, and the Roman imitations. The iconography of Etruscan gods and myths in their relation with those of the Greeks was investigated and the first painted Etruscan tombs with beautiful wall paintings were cleared. These issues discussed during the 18th Century are highlighted in the exhibition in light of modern research and are illustrated with numerous monuments. The exhibition was made possible thanks to loans (especially of bronzes, vases, urns, terra cotta, marble bases, facsimiles of Etruscan grave paintings, and replicas of masterpieces of Etruscan art) from Jerusalem, Copenhagen, Bochum, Dresden, Hamburg, Hanover, Jena, Gotha, Leipzig, Altenburg, Bonn, and Berlin.