the Romans get closer and closer to total takeover of the Etruscans we're going to want to talk about some Etruscan bronze sculptures at the height of their creativity we have not discussed bronze technique in detail we looked at some bronzes where we haven't really talked about how it's made this example from the late 5th century it's about three feet high and five feet long and it's called a chi mara CH i m e ra and this poor creature look at him he's a lion with a goat coming out of his side with a snake for a tail a composite creature to be sure the term Chamara is used in literature to refer to something that is like a plague for example the that art history professor she's like a chi mara it's the equivalent of saying there's like a monkey on your back this image was of course gonna be buried not intentionally but as the Etruscans fell and then it was rediscovered during the Renaissance under the auspices of Cosimo de Medici and he is going to adopt this image on his crest as a symbol of his authority it is reported that he used to spend his free time chopping or chipping away the rust from this sculpture when it was discovered so pause the recording and go below and listen to the narrated video about bronze technique so now you get the sense of how bronze is created and that technique that was used in antiquity is the same way that bronze sculptures are made today this is also the time that this very important sculpture was made but I'm going to save that for when we get into our conversations about Rome so these bronzes can be created into full scale sculptures this guy is obviously missing part of his attire but you can see contrapposto weight shift you can see the body is highly articulated his eyes are made after this interesting composite material we know who he is by what he is wearing down here and these bronze figures then carry forward from the very end of the period moving into when Etruscans are no mas and we are only talking about the Romans here so this looks like a classic sculpture in in many many ways so we need to take a look at what's going to happen with funerary objects so look at the change now here we are way back in the archaic period now we're down to the second century we've switched from terracotta to carved stone so we've got a carved stone sarcophagus now these sarcophagi can hold remains or they can hold cremated remains but what you can see is that we've got the reclining figure on the top and that's the important part of the story now look what happens though earlier so this is the older one this is the newer one before the Romans take over after the Romans take over do you see what happens but what's really much more important artistically here is this wonderful depiction of a couple who's sort of like cuddling in bed for eternity and I think that that's such a fascinating idea that we really haven't seen in art before like if you think about the marriage pose of the ancient Egyptians or something like that you know this is just much more real-life and it really speaks to us in the 21st century but it doesn't last long right it doesn't last long very shortly we're going to have this kind of conventionalized image and so it's kind of interesting what happens is they sort of have a stock supply of sarcophagi of both bases and lids and so it you know let's say that great aunt Cindy dies and so you want to go and choose a sarcophagus lid like oh well you can have this model or you can have this model and she's painted brunette and she's painted blonde and then you can say okay let's pick you know it's sort of an interesting version of of how these things are done today the mythology on the bottom will be something that might have been important to the actual person who died maybe a myth or a legend that they were fond of the different kind of poses and objects that are held by the men and the women then with an inscription it may or may not have the name but I want to leave you with this image here we're in the second century and now we are combining two different types of burial this is a round subterranean tomb that's carved from tufa and then in side we've got all these little sarcophagi so we've got a full burial the people's remains inside but they line them up in this little circle so it looks like they're having a party right so men are holding libation bowls writing instruments drinking horns women hold mirrors torches palms or pomegranates they all would have been brightly painted but they're not individualized remember you're going to go to the sarcophagus store and you're gonna say that one there are so far 50 different narrated bases found of the sarcophagi and what you're gonna see now is this Etruscan variation of greco-roman mythology with a distinctly Tuscan form and it is from here that you'll see Roman burial practices take off in a very grand way