Archaic terracotta acroteria representing Athena and Heracles: manifestations of power in central Italy

Lulof, P.S.

doi:10.1017/s1047759400018882

Cited by 10 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…As mentioned above, the earliest statues in the round placed on the ridge of temple roofs were the groups of Herakles and a female deity, mostly identified as Athena, at circa 540-530 BC (Lulof 2000;Winter 2005: 244-246;2009: 571). Another near-contemporary innovation, at circa 520-510 BC, was the placing of handmade terracotta plaques sculpted in high reliefs at the ends of the central and four side beams supporting the sloping roofs, known as columen and mutuli respectively.…”

Section: Framing Narratives Vis-à-vis the Divine: Violence And Sacrifice At Caerementioning

confidence: 94%

“…Recent analyses, re-analyses and major syntheses of architectural terracottas decorating mostly the roofs of buildings within sanctuaries in and outside the major urban centres of the Central Tyrrhenian region as well as further afield has been notable (Lulof 2000(Lulof , 2008(Lulof , 2011Winter 2005;. In particular, the identification of Archaic roof systems (Winter 2009) and the reconstruction of later Archaic roofs' terracotta decoration leading to ongoing research on the evolution of these systems (Lulof 2000(Lulof , 2011(Lulof , 2016 leave us with an abundant set of archaeological and visual evidence that is ripe for interpretation in regards to the contextshistorical, economic and socio-political -within which this religious material was produced. Some most recent pleas to exploit this evidence to this interpretive end have been made, particularly in regard to the agency of craftsmen and of their artistic production in promoting, if not engendering, social and political transformation (Smith 2019).…”

Section: State Of the Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In fact, scholarly analysis of this material has treated the relationship between craftsmanship and politics for some time and in one particular case, namely the production of large-scale terracotta acroteria of Herakles paired with a female deity, and the placing of this pair on the roofs of temples in the central Tyrrhenian region from circa 540-530 -so far known at the Etruscan cities of Veii (twice) and Caere (also twice), Pyrgi, the Latin city of Satricum, Rome, Velletri, Caprifico and Pompeii (Lulof 2000;2016: 31, 138, footnote 36;Winter 2009: 377-381). The placing of these acroteria has been read as an act of political propaganda by the local rulers of these cities who probably commissioned these temples.…”

Section: State Of the Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The placing of these acroteria has been read as an act of political propaganda by the local rulers of these cities who probably commissioned these temples. In sharing common iconographic schemata facilitated by the mobility of craftsmen, these rulers exploited the figure of Herakles and the mythological narrative of the hero's labours culminating in his apotheosis in order to legitimise their own political power (Lulof 2000). Such a reading seems to be well-founded: Herakles, a Mediterranean-wide or what might be called a glocal hero (Kistler 2012) serving multiple, highly localised and regional colonial discourses in the Greek world (e.g.…”

Section: State Of the Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Carlucci 2011: 117) seemingly for two reasons: on the one hand, the statue pair of Herakles with a female deity had no relation to the gods worshipped at these religious sites (Lulof 2000;Winter 2005: 247), while the more complex terracotta statuary groups placed on the ridge of later temples represented mythological stories, namely the temple of Apollo replacing, at circa 510 BC, an earlier building that was decorated with the Herakles and goddess pair at Veii-Portonaccio, and the temple of Mater Matuta at Satricum that was also rebuilt at circa 500-490 BC (Winter 2005: 247-149;Lulof 2011). On the other hand, the cult statue defined as the image of the god and hence the focus of worship evokes the Greek tradition of the housing of such a statue inside temple buildings.…”

Section: Framing the Godsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Violence, Power and Religion in the South Etruscan Archaic City-State

Riva¹

Religion and Urbanity Online

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Changes in architectural terracotta decoration of temple buildings in Archaic southern Etruria indicate changing attitudes towards the encounter with divinity, which, in turn, shaped religious experience for worshippers, as well as offering an opportunity for the exploitation of that experience to political ends. This paper explores this entanglement by taking the citystate of Caere and its temple decoration as a case study and particularly the cult and iconography of Greek hero Herakles and related myths into account in order to examine the intersection between ritualization and political power in a phase of urban growth across Tyrrhenian Central Italy. Focus, explanatory hypotheses, applied concepts and methodsThis paper wishes to investigate how the religious environment, which includes worshippers' activities as well as the elaborate decoration of religious spaces, shaped, and was in turn shaped by, political power in the city-states of Archaic Southern Etruria, circa sixth to early fifth centuries BC, and hence, to explore the relationship between this power and ritualization (Gordon 1979: 17) in urban settings. It will do so by exploiting theoretically-informed art-historical studies of coeval architectural decoration of Greek temples, which have underlined a system of communication in the decorative programmes of these temples, in which different levels of religious and cultural significance or, one might say, semantic densities pertained to different artistic genres of the decoration, from sculptures in the round to wall paintings and metopes (Hölscher 2009). These studies have furthermore introduced a key conceptual category for understanding such programmes, namely the concept of ornament inherent in the Greek and Latin words kosmos and ornamentum respectively, which, although different in their original meanings (Saliou 2015: 134), both refer to the moral and social order underlying the aesthetic order and hence physical ornament of cult buildings (Marconi 2004; Hölscher 2009; cf. Tanner 2006 on the relationship between the social and the aesthetic in relation to cult statues). Moral and social values thus drove the decorative choices of Greek temples; at the same time, these values were expressed in a religious space where theological demands equally affected these choices (Osborne 2009; cf. Osborne et al. 2016).In contrast to Greece, Archaic Etruria suffers from a lower level of preservation of temple decoration, which often survives in highly fragmented assemblages, as exemplified by much of architectural terracotta decoration at the city of Caere found in cisterns as dumps of building material (Winter 2016: 129). We also lack texts that give us an entry into the Etruscan mentality, and Etruscan social and moral values although analysis across different types of archaeological contexts can partly fill this lacuna (e.g. Riva 2017). Yet, borrowing these conceptual categories and analytical frameworks can greatly assist us. It is not, however, a simple matter of borrowing.Rather, my aim is comparati...

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Section: Framing Narratives Vis-à-vis the Divine: Violence And Sacrifice At Caerementioning

confidence: 94%