Etruscan treasures on display in Florence: important collection of about 300 artifacts reunited after 150 years

A new exhibition entitled Treasures from the Lands of Etruria opened at the National Archaeological Museum in Florence. The Collection of the Counts Passerini, Patricians of Florence and Cortona, open to the public until June 30, 2021.

On this occasion, the archaeological collection of Count Napoleone Passerini and his family, largely kept in the warehouses of the same Florentine museum venue, will be entirely reunited in its main nuclei for the first time in about 150 years, now complemented by 82 valuable mainly Etruscan and Greek antiquities, delivered by a Florentine donor in 2016 to the Carabinieri Cultural Heritage Protection Command in Florence.

The count of noble Cortonese lineage, son of the wealthy Pietro Passerini da Cortona, in addition to being a famous agronomist, was a passionate collector, and from his teenage years he assembled the extraordinary collection, partly inherited from his father, promoting excavations and acquiring masterpieces. The earliest finds came from about thirty Etruscan tombs with splendid grave goods, discovered in the vast estates of Bettolle and Sinalunga, and from a large necropolis of sixty tombs on the Foiano della Chiana hillside. As early as 1877, his collection numbered at least 400 vessels, excluding ivory, ironware, glass paste, a considerable amount of bronze household and funerary objects, furnishings of all kinds, larder and trade vessels, honey jars, and vases for solid and liquid foodstuffs, many with inscriptions that contribute to increased knowledge of the lexicon of the Etruscan language. In addition, the collection comes from a precise territorial and cultural context, that of the Val di Chiana, of which it documents aspects of life and culture between the 7th and 1st centuries B.C., particularly those of the Chiusi aristocracy.

Curated by Mario Iozzo, director of the National Archaeological Museum in Florence, and Maria Rosaria Luberto, an archaeologist from the Italian Archaeological School in Athens, with the overall coordination of Stefano Casciu, regional director of the Museums of Tuscany, the exhibition displays 293 artifacts, including Athenian vases of great quality, some with extremely rare iconographies, and one of the oldest and most important Etruscan vases of the entire red-figure production, a large vase for mixing water and wine used in the symposia of the Etruscan aristocracy ofAger Clusinus, the territory of ancient Chiusi.
These are joined by 18 mementos and memorabilia of Napoleon Passerini, even his pipe, kindly loaned by his great-grandchildren.

The exhibition is accompanied by large iconographic panels with images and related references of the masterpieces that between the latenineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth century left the collection to be displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the then Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem, and the Silver collection in Los Angeles, including some valuable vases that presumably transited the Passerini collection before ending up abroad, providing a complete picture of the range of objects collected by Passerini.

The public can also download the National Archaeological Museum of Florence’s new app for free: it was created thanks to the support and collaboration of Fondazione CR Firenze, as part of “Valore Museo.” The app aims to facilitate and enrich the visit of a museum as articulated and complex as the Archaeological Museum, proposing two integrated paths dedicated to the masterpieces and the history of the building. A digital journey that develops in parallel by crossing and telling the story of the rooms of the historic Crocetta Palace, formerly a Medici residence.

Hours: Thursday from 2 to 7 p.m.; Friday, Saturday and first Sunday of the month from 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Tickets: Full 8 euros, reduced 2 euros.

Image: Athenian red-figure Stamnos (symposium vase) (late work by the Dokimasia painter; 470-460 BC). Scene of the hoplon krisis, the judgment for the assignment of the late Achilles’ weapons to Ajax or Odysseus, decided by vote and in the presence of Athena, on the battlefield at Troy.

Etruscan treasures on display in Florence: important collection of about 300 artifacts reunited after 150 years

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