More than 100 votive terracottas from the Etruscan city of Veio on display in Modena

From December 18, 2022 to December 17, 2023, the exhibition DeVoti Etruschi. The rediscovery of the Veio collection of the Civic Museum of Modena, curated by Laura Michetti, Carla Tulini and Cristiana Zanasi.

More than one hundred votive terracottas from the Etruscan city of Veio are on display. The votive terracottas on display depict figures of devotees, statues, busts, faces of adults and children, anatomical parts, limbs and organs, as well as depictions of animals with which the prosperity of domestic livestock was requested. The terracottas come from an immense votive stipe also known as the"Stipe Lanciani," which was found in 1889 and is still being studied by the Department of Etruscology and Italic Antiquities at Sapienza University): this is a deposit referable to a possible sacred area on the hill of Comunità, at the highest point of the plateau of Veio, an important place of worship frequented for a long time, between the beginning of the 5th and the middle of the 2nd century BC.C., even after Rome’s conquest of the city.

A video made between the Veio Archaeological Park and the Etru Museum of Villa Giulia, which presents the context from which the finds came, introduces the exhibition, and a video installation, made by Delumen - Modena, brings to life the faces of the offerers, the Etruscan devotees, represented by more than fifty heads and a large statue that observe the visitor from a panel framed in the cast of the portal of the Nonantola Abbey. The projection restores the votive heads to their original colorations, starting with the specimens on which traces of polychromy are preserved, and gives the faces as a whole the appearance they must have had at the time of the deposition. In addition, asound installation recalls with faint whispers the dedications addressed to the deities in Etruscan and Latin languages.

The exhibition project is enriched by a scientific catalog edited by Cristiana Zanasi, Laura Maria Michetti and Carla Tulini, published by Insegna del Giglio.

The exhibition is part of the project to rediscover the nineteenth-century archaeological collections preserved in the deposits of the Civic Museum of Modena, under which the exhibition on the Ancient Egyptian collection and the one, concluded in 2022, of the collection of flint artifacts from the French Paleolithic period have already been realized. The collection of Etruscan votive terracottas became part of the Civic Museum’s holdings in 1894, thanks to the Modenese astronomer Pietro Tacchini, who proposed to the palethnologist Luigi Pigorini that he exchange the evidence collected on one of his trips around the world, in which Pigorini was very interested for the Roman museum, for a significant selection of votive offerings from Veio that would go to enrich the Civic Museum of Modena.

An articulated research project was carried out that combined scientific and humanistic disciplines, with the aim of rediscovering the museum’s nineteenth-century collections both from an archaeological and historical-collection point of view and from the point of view of diagnostics using modern technologies. The archaeological study of the artifacts was carried out in collaboration with the University of Rome La Sapienza and was entrusted to ethruscologists Laura Maria Michetti and Carla Tulini, co-curators of the exhibition with Cristiana Zanasi.

The exhibition was an opportunity to re-study the finds both from an iconographic point of view and through archaeometric investigations that revealed significant new findings on votive terracotta painting thanks to the polychromy analyses curated by Andrea Rossi, DI.AR Diagnostica per i Beni Culturali. Starting with the analysis of the specimens preserved in Modena, economic and production aspects were also investigated, adding further data to the knowledge of the votive context.

A further contribution was entrusted to a team of palopathologists from the University of Bologna and the Italian Group of Paleopathology, who examined the anatomical ex-votos in the collection within the broader framework of the pathologies present in Etruscan populations and the medical knowledge they had developed.

The project also responds to a conservation need, as each enhanced collection is placed in storage after display in the best conditions of preservation. At the same time, the Museum’s network of scientific collaborations is renewed and enriched, opening new horizons for research, creating connections between the heritage on display, that preserved in storage, and an archive of documents that tells the story of an institute that progressively increases its knowledge and defines its role between past, present and future.

A calendar of initiatives aimed at different audiences accompanies the exhibition, from meetings with experts to workshops for children and families. It will start on Feb. 28, 2023 with Jacopo Tabolli of the University for Foreigners of Siena, who will present the votive context of San Casciano dei Bagni, where statues of devotees and bronze votive offerings have recently been found. The schedule of events will be published on the Modena Civic Museum website in January 2023.

For info: https://www.museocivicomodena.it/

Hours: Tuesday through Friday from 9 a.m. to noon; Saturday, Sunday and holidays from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Dec. 24 from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., Dec. 25 from 4 to 7 p.m., Dec. 26 from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Dec. 31 from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and Jan. 1 from 4 to 7 p.m.

More than 100 votive terracottas from the Etruscan city of Veio on display in Modena

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