Here we have one of the treasures of the beautiful and recommended Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia in Rome, that is one of the most comprehensive collections about the etruscan art and civilization in the world, the real one that you can find in Rome.  To bring tourists here is always a pleasure...

Maybe just the Etruscan collection at the Vatican Museums could be cool like this one, another collection that has several masterpieces (as you can read here). But here, at the Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia, we maybe have the great symbol of the art of this ancient civilization: the Apollo of Veii! It is a acroterium statue (a devotional statue very common in etruscan art and positioned on the roof of the temples) in polychrome terracotta (we can still see traces of pigment). It is dated, think about it, in the sixth century b.C. A good way to understand how ancient is this civilization, for centuries the most advanced in the city of Rome itself.

It is part of the decorations of the famous Temple of Veio, a historic city of southern Etruria, which was one of the first historical enemies of Rome, when the Republic had just sort. Imagine, the Eternal City and Veii being in competition, and then fighting war (especially for the control and management of raw materials such as salt), for many years. And Veii, with its temples, its houses, and its size, was already a large and prestigious urban agglomeration. Place outside the city walls, the temple was a hub for religious, and was considered to be the reference point for the other etruscan city-state. Thanks to this simple statue we can go back in time, when the etruscan community used to meet here to decide common policies, in the shadow of this temple that, for duty of chronicle, was not dedicated to Apollo (God of the Sun and of the Arts), but Menerva (not a writing error), the deity of the pantheon etruscan comparable, obviously, to the goddess Minerva. Another detail to understand how, in ancient times, different civilizations used to influence each other, reusing and transforming them into local deities, religious rites and civil traditions.

The Apollo of the Temple of Veio, as well as other decorative testimonies (primary phases or elements in ceramic, painted) probably comes from a single workshop, and even more probably it was managed by the famous artist named Vulca, and perhaps the most famous artist of ancient Etruria. The acroterium elements were used to praise the fates or the deeds of a god or a specific character. In this case, near the Apollo of Veii, you can see fragments of clay pots, and polychrome statues. One was Hercules, with which Apollo fought (and winning), for the capture of a deer. The other, however, was Latona, the mother of Apollo. How many things in a single, and very ancient, work of art...