The Etruscans and Italian culture: from the ‘Good King’ to the Einaudi presidency

Revisiting the debate initiated on the occasion of the exhibition Etruscans of the Twentieth Century (2025), Fondazione Luigi Rovati hosts a conversation between Etruscologists Maurizio Harari, Stefano Bruni, and Giulio Paolucci, exploring the reception and influence of Etruscan imagery in Italian culture from the late nineteenth century to the first half of the twentieth century.

Taking Stefano Bruni’s book The Etruscans and Italian Culture: From the “Good King” to the Einaudi Presidency(Edizioni ETS) as its starting point, the discussion examines the cultural and ideological significance acquired over the course of the century by themes that might appear merely scholarly or elitist. The conversation will focus on several emblematic Etruscan icons, including the Chimera, a figure that remains strikingly relevant today in its irreducible otherness.

Stefano Bruni

Stefano Bruni, formerly an archaeological officer at the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage, is Professor of Etruscology and Italic Antiquities at the University of Ferrara. He was Visiting Professor at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa in 2016–2017, 2019–2020, and 2020–2021. Since 2019, he has served on the faculty board of the PhD programme in Archaeology—Etruscology and Italic Antiquities section—at Sapienza University of Rome.

He is a member of the National Institute for Etruscan and Italic Studies, where he has served as Secretary General since 2018. He is also a member of the German Archaeological Institute, the Tuscan Academy of Sciences and Letters “La Colombaria,” the Pontifical Roman Academy of Archaeology, the Etruscan Academy of Cortona, the Accademia dei Sepolti of Volterra, and the Centre for Adriatic Archaeological Studies.

He has taken part in archaeological excavations in Etruria—including Tarquinia, Massa Marittima, Chiusi, Populonia, and Orvieto—and in Magna Graecia, at Siris–Herakleia. He has also directed excavations and research throughout Etruria, particularly in Pisa and its surrounding province.

Bruni has organised numerous exhibitions in Italy and abroad. Among the most recent are Winckelmann, Florence and the Etruscans, held at the Archaeological Museum of Florence in 2016–2017, and Etruscan Spina: A Great Port in the Mediterranean, presented in Ferrara in 2022 and at the National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia in Rome in 2023.

He is the author of more than 350 scholarly publications—including monographs, articles, and reviews—appearing in leading Italian and international journals and focusing primarily on the Etruscan and Italic worlds. A significant area of his research is devoted to the history of scholarship and antiquarian studies, approached from a distinctly historical perspective.