Images of Eternity
New Research and Perspectives for the Study of Etruscan Funerary Painting
Images of Eternity is an international symposium that offered two days of discussion on Etruscan funerary painting, held on the occasion of the exhibition I Giochi Olimpici™. Una storia lunga tremila anni at Fondazione Luigi Rovati, where the Tomba delle Olimpiadi of Tarquinia is exceptionally on display.
The initiative stems from the research experience of the Coordinated Research Center “Progetto Tarquinia” at the University of Milan, directed by Giovanna Bagnasco Gianni, from which the research strand on painted tombs—curated by Matilde Marzullo—has developed.
The conference is organized by the University of Milan, Fondazione Luigi Rovati, and the Parco Archeologico di Cerveteri e Tarquinia, with the patronage of the Istituto di Studi Etruschi e Italici.
The themes of the conference
Etruscan funerary painting—of which the painted tombs of Tarquinia provide an extraordinary testimony—is one of the most fascinating and well-known artistic products of this ancient civilization, a vivid demonstration of how essential it was for this Italic people to express their memory and identity through images and symbolic representations.
For the Etruscans, burials were not places devoted exclusively to the remembrance of the dead, but liminal and representative spaces where different aspects of culture intersected: everyday life, religion, ritual practices, and politics. For this reason, they became privileged spaces for self-representation—places to display social and political prestige, but also to express expectations or fears concerning the afterlife and the aspiration to eternity.
More than twenty years after the Necropolis of Monterozzi in Tarquinia was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, Images of Eternity aims to provide a comprehensive update on the most recent archaeological, art-historical, and conservation research devoted to funerary painting.
The symposium brings together scholars from Italian and European universities, museums, and heritage institutions for a scientific exchange of the highest level.
