Discs of Splendor: The Relief Mirrors of the Etruscans (review)

The Corpus of Etruscan Mirrors (Corpus Speculorum Etruscorum, CSE) is well on its way to publishing the three thousand or so surviving bronze mirrors produced for the women of Etruria, who used them in their lifetime and took them to their graves. Modeled on the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum (CVA), it lists them according to country, city, and museum inventory numbers, a structure designed to avoid subjective groupings. In contrast, the present volume, a revised version of the author's 1993 dissertation, brings together a coherent group of all known examples of mirrors decorated with relief figures rather than with the usual incised images. It is surprising that this important group of mirrors has not been studied before as a whole, though many—sixteen, including six possible forgeries—have been the objects of individual attention in the scholarly literature. Their large size and weight, their rarity, and the use of gold, silver, and copper inlay, all mark them as especially luxurious prestige items and testify to the creative talent of the artist who first invented the type and to the skill of the local bronze workers who produced them. The author's suggestion that the inventor was from Vulci is quite plausible, given the activity there in the sixth and fifth centuries of a highly skilled bronze workshop specializing in the production of relief figural attachments for bronze incense burners, candleholders, cistas, and other luxurious furnishings.

The introduction emphasizes the originality of this type of object, which is a purely Etruscan specialty, and of the decoration, which consists of figures and scenes taken from the repertoire of Greek mythology, with peculiarly Etruscan adaptations of the representations that express their own customs and beliefs. In the scene of Herakles, for example, the Etruscan Hercle is shown carrying off a female figure labeled Mlachuch, a name otherwise unknown to us.

Chapters are divided chronologically, with five mirrors assigned to the fifth century, four to the fourth century, and only one to the third, a smaller, circular handle-mirror with the figure of the sea monster Scylla. The remaining six mirrors, of doubtful authenticity, are treated in chapter 4. Each chapter provides a catalogue of the mirrors, with full descriptions and basic data and analysis of the style, date, workshop, and iconography of each of the mirrors. A study of the six probable forgeries illuminates some techniques and mistakes of nineteenth-century forgers, who show Aphrodite, Etruscan Turan, as a hermaphrodite on the analogy of an image of a youthful, effeminate Eros with a feminine hairstyle on an authentic mirror.

The volume represents a real contribution to Etruscan studies. Because the objective documentation is given so clearly, one can argue with the author's interpretations without mistrusting the evidence she presents. The 120 illustrations of mirrors and comparative material, an unusually generous number, allow for detailed comparisons. They are very welcome, even though there are a few problems: the numbering of the color plates interrupts the consecutive numbering of the black-and-white plates, which occasionally leads to some confusion; and several color photographs are murky and hard to read. We are grateful to the author for providing us at last with a well-organized, well-documented, and well-illustrated study of these remarkable objects, which have much to tell us about the metal-working skill of the ancient Etruscan craftsmen, the sophisticated taste of their patrons, and the images which they chose from the Greek mythological and figurative repertoire and used in order to express their own identity, just as they used the Greek alphabet to write their own special language.