If you have been to Villa Giulia (Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia) in Rome, you have likely encountered this glorious, slightly under life-sized terracotta head. She hails from about an hour northwest of Rome from Pyrgi (Cerveteri’s port), and was once part of the pedimental sculpture of one of the small 4th century temples there.
This is Etruscan terracotta craftsmanship at its very finest, so effectively showing the wind whipping through the goddess’s curls along with her slightly breathless insouciance as those brown eyes (note the traces of pigment that have survived!) glance earthward.
Like so many things Etruscan, her identity is not so very easy to pin down, and she is variously identified as Leucothea (transl. the white goddess) or Thesan, to whom the temple is thought to have been dedicated. Regardless of the precise name used, both these goddesses seem to have functioned as the bringers of the dawn (as in Greek Eos). And as such developed a roving eye, kept trained on new mortal love interests. That is, anyway, how I like to think of this head – once perched high up on a temple façade, peering downward on her morning commute, with the wind in her hair.
[And if you have not been to Villa Giulia, you must visit soon! It is on the far side of the verdant Villa Borghese, and is absolutely chock full of Greek vases (including seriously important ones) and all things Etruscan…both well-known finds and nutty, obscure, and virtually unpublished ones. And it provides welcome respite from the mouth-breathing hoards who trudge through the Galleria Borghese.]
