François Tomb to go on permanent display at Villa Giulia from 25 June.
The Italian state has acquired the celebrated François Tomb from Vulci for €15 million, with the deed of sale signed at the culture ministry in Rome on Friday.
In a statement, culture minister Alessandro Giuli descibed the François Tomb as “one of the most important masterpieces of Etruscan and ancient painting”, which will soon be enjoyed by the public.
The tomb will be placed on permanent display at the National Etruscan Museum at Villa Giulia in Rome from 25 June, when a major exhibition dedicated to the monument will open.
The acquisition was made possible through collaboration with the heirs of the Torlonia, Sforza Cesarini and Gaetani families, the monument’s previous owners, and was overseen jointly by the Directorate General of Museums, led by Massimo Osanna, and Villa Giulia’s director, Luana Toniolo.
Giuli described the purchase as closing a process that began over a century ago: the Italian state had first expressed an interest in acquiring the François Tomb as long ago as 1921.
The monument
The tomb was discovered on 1 May 1857 by the archaeologist Alessandro François in the Ponte Rotto necropolis at Vulci, on land belonging to Prince Alessandro Torlonia.
Cut into tufa rock and composed of 37 painted panels and two stone cippi found in its entrance corridor, it dates to between 340 and 320 BC and ranks among the supreme surviving examples of ancient painting.
Its pictorial programme weaves together Greek mythology, Etruscan historical memory and the construction of aristocratic identity in Vulci.
Through painted inscriptions beside the figures, the scenes allow viewers to identify names, faces and episodes that intertwine history, legend and representations of power.
Trojan prisoners
Among the most celebrated images is a large panel depicting the sacrifice of Trojan prisoners at the tomb of Patroclus, with Achilles at the centre and the myth reinterpreted through the Etruscan sensibility via the blue-skinned demon Charun with his hammer and the winged figure of Vanth.
The opposite wall shows the liberation of Caele Vibenna by his brother Aulus and by Macstarna, identified by tradition with the future king of Rome Servius Tullius – a scene of exceptional historical and political importance.
Running through the cycle is the longest known animal frieze of antiquity, populated by griffins, lions, panthers, deer, boars and other real and fantastical creatures.
June exhibition
To mark the acquisition, a major exhibition will open at Villa Giulia on 25 June. Loans from some of the world’s most prestigious institutions will allow the original context of the monument to be reconstructed.
The Louvre, the British Museum, the Royal Museum of Art and History in Brussels, the Cantonal Museum of Archaeology and History in Lausanne, the Vatican Museums and the German Archaeological Institute in Rome have all contributed exceptional loans of artefacts, documents, historic copies and works connected to the tomb or its collecting history.
Villa Giulia
The National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia, located near the Villa Borghese park in Rome, is Italy’s principal institution devoted to Etruscan civilisation.
Housed in a magnificent 16th-century villa built for Pope Julius III, it holds one of the world’s most important collections of Etruscan and Faliscan artefacts, including the celebrated Sarcophagus of the Spouses and the Pyrgi Gold Tablets.
The François Tomb will be a landmark addition to a collection that has defined scholarly understanding of pre-Roman Italy for over a century.
Acquisition drive
The purchase forms part of an active programme of heritage acquisitions in recent months by the culture ministry, under Giuli.
In February of this year, Italy purchased Antonello da Messina’s Ecce Homo – a small double-sided panel painting also featuring a Penitent Saint Jerome on the reverse – for $14.9 million through a private negotiation with Sotheby’s, intervening just before the work was due to go under the hammer in New York.
Works by Antonello da Messina (c. 1430–1479) are extremely rare, with only around 40 surviving, and this example, painted around 1460, was likely the last one remaining in private hands.
Then in March, the Italian state purchased a rare portrait by Caravaggio – depicting Monsignor Maffeo Barberini, the future Pope Urban VIII – for €30 million, following more than a year of negotiations.
The work, which dates to the turn of the 17th century, will join the permanent collection of Palazzo Barberini in Rome.
Giuli described both the Caravaggio purchase and the Antonello acquisition as part of an ongoing strategy to strengthen Italy’s national collections and return key works to public access.
Photo Ministero della Cultura
