cover image Abundance of Life: Etruscan Wall Painting

Abundance of Life: Etruscan Wall Painting

Stephan Steingraber, . . J. Paul Getty Trust, $125 (328pp) ISBN 978-0-89236-865-5

The pictures are amazing. It's too bad about the text. Not that archeologist Steingräber doesn't provide a thorough, if stodgily academic, tour of Etruscan wall painting in this large-scale art book. His smooth, jargon-free account of what he calls "the first chapter in the history of Italian painting," dating from the seventh to the second centuries B.C., will be accessible to anyone with a grasp of the basic outlines of ancient history. The problem is that it's so difficult to connect what Steingräber says with the pictures in the book. The images are not numbered, making it nearly impossible to track down any painting Steingräber mentions, or even to know if the painting is reproduced in the book at all. But the pictures are stunning. Masterfully photographed paintings on Etruscan tomb walls inventively depict birds, dancers, divers and scenes of the afterlife in loose, free-flowing lines. Especially gorgeous are the ones printed on heavy, textured "Tintoretto" paper that imparts something of the painting's original stone surfaces. Full-page closeups of unexpected details—a boy gazing at a bird in his hand, the curious expressions on the faces of a three-headed serpent—bring an entire world to life and allow it to tell its own story. (Nov. 13)