Published Catalogue Text: Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums , written 1990
13
Torso of the Type Identified with Archaic Kouroi
This statue bears traces of purple paint on white underpaint. The head and lower legs are missing. There are patches on the chest repaired in plaster.
The forms of the area from the waist to the knees are suggestive of the section of a kouros found in the tumulus of Pietrera at Vetulonia and now in the Archaeological Museum, Florence. It was made of pietra fetida, a stone of local nature (Hus, 1961, pp. 30, 127-133, pl. 1).
The face of the Robinson kouros with head preserved can be paralleled in the head of a sphinx in the Musee du Louvre, from Vulci, no. 2054 (Hus, 1961, p. 42, no. 11, pl. xxiv), and a double-herm in Florence, no. 73.138, from Orvieto (Hus, 1961, p. 84, no. 1, pl. xxxvii). The first statue is made of nenfro, and the second sculpture is carved in trachyte.
In summation, the increased understanding of local, Archaic sculptures in Etruria suggest that the two Robinson statues, as well as other heretofore unclassified, "rustic" works of Archaic art in rough stones, belong in the "twilight" world (made so by illicit excavation) of Etruria, rather than in any obscure, undocumented Sicilian antiquarian "red herring" of an alleged provenance. In truth, these statues could have been set up in the same way as all the more common Etruscan animals, real and fantastic (leopards, lions, sphinxes, hippocamps, and a centaur), along the dromoi or atop the entrances of Etruscan tombs at Vulci and nearby areas.
Cornelius Vermeule and Amy Brauer
