L'arco e la faretra. Nuove ipotesi su una lastra dipinta da Cerveteri

Focus of the present article is an etruscan painted plaque found out at Cerveteri (Campetti) in the 1940s by Mario Moretti , who published it in 1957 together with other panels that afterwards Francesco Roncalli labelled the "Gorgon series" in his monographic essay. The best preserved of these archaic paintings from Campetti depict the greek myths of Perseus attacking the Gorgons and the Paris' judgment (Roncalli's corpus: nr. 43, 46-47). Due to the uncommon subject of the panel nr. 45 of Roncalli's corpus (a bearded seated man holding a plate toward which a big bird is flying from top left), this plaque of the Campetti' series has been neglected by etruscologists. The Author re-examines this document from an iconographical point of view on the basis of the identification of three new elements passed unnoticed until now: 1) a bow and a quiver behind the seated man; 2) some pieces of meat laying on the plate; 3) a scene with galloping centaurs armed with tree branches in the upper frieze. At the end of a long demonstration, the character is tentatively identified by the present Author as Heracles and the story as the meeting of the hero with the centaur Pholos. As a matter of fact, this is the only episode of Heracles' biography in which we can find all together these elements: Heracles represented as an archer, a meat meal, flying birds, centaurs. The article's last part deals with the contextualisation of the discovery in the framework of the caeretan society of the archaic period.