Etruscan canopus from Dolciano (Chiusi).


 Etruscan canopus from Dolciano (Chiusi).

The canopus is part of the Chiusina production of anthropomorphic ossuaries (from the second quarter of the seventh to the first quarter of the sixth century BC) even if it stands out for the uniqueness due to the assembly of different materials.

The canop was found by Giovanni Paolozzi around 1877 in a ziro tomb near Dolciano, a hamlet of Chiusi.

At the death of Paolozzi, in 1907, it was donated to the then Civic Museum of Chiusi, together with other finds of the cd. Paolozzi Collection.

Dating from the late seventh and early sixth centuries BC, the cinerary is composed of a terracotta head modeled in the round with detail of the features (advanced type canop) and an ovoid vase (representing the body of the deceased) in bronze.

The ossuary is placed on a bronze throne embossed, with a large semicircular espalier and decorated with orientalizing motifs: rosettes, winged quadrupeds and palmettes.

The canope characterized by the association between the terracotta head / lid and the bronze body is unique. The composite nature of the same has raised perplexity among scholars who have suspected it to be a nineteenth-century assembly of pieces of different ossuaries. That the cinerary had been made with different materials would be confirmed by the finder Giovanni Paolozzi and Canon Giovanni Brogi, also present at the discovery (in particular by the content of a letter sent by Brogi to Luigi Adriano Milani, published in 1885).

The preciousness of the find suggests that it belongs to a deceased of the Chiusina elite.

The cinerary is exhibited at the National Archaeological Museum of Chiusi.

On the canopo da Dolciano see, inter alia, Enrico Barni, Giulio Paolucci, Archeologia e Antiquaria a Chiusi nell'Ottocento, Electa, 1985, pag. 106 footnote 5; L. Vlad Borrelli, Il canopo di Dolciano: evidenze e perplessità dopo un restauro, Studi Etruschi, XLI, (1973) pagg. 203 – 236; Facebook account National Etruscan Museum of Chiusi pag. of 28 November 2017 on Canopus of Dolciano.

Below are the images of the ossuary from Dolciano.

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