Bronze cista handle featuring Sleep and Death (early 4th century B.C.E.) on loan from The Cleveland Museum of Art.
Forgotten Innovators of the Ancient World? A New Show Gives the Etruscans Their Due
The exhibition at Legion of Honor explores the Etruscans' impact on Western civilization.
America hasn’t had a major Etruscan exhibition since 2009, when Dallas’s Meadows Museum hosted “New Light on the Etruscans.” That changes in May 2026, when San Francisco’s Legion of Honor museum unveils “The Etruscans: From the Heart of Ancient Italy,” a sprawling show of 180 Etruscan antiquities from 30 international museums—many of which have never been seen in the United States. The exhibition will culminate 10 years of research and elucidate how this enigmatic Italian civilization shaped the Roman culture immediately after theirs.
Terracotta Caeretan hydria attributed to Eagle Painter (520–510 B.C.E.) On loan from The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
The Etruscans are one of Europe’s lesser-known entities. Rome is partly to blame. The Etruscans dominated central Italy throughout the 1st millennium B.C.E., until the formidably unified Romans conquered their comparatively isolated cities one by one throughout the 2nd and 1st centuries B.C.E.—claiming numerous Etruscan innovations as their own along the way.
“They needed to have somebody pleading their cause, especially in America where so many people had not heard of the Etruscans,” Reneé Dreyfus, one of two ancient art curators at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the mastermind behind this show, told me on a video call. “The timing is so right for this exhibition, because many museums now have new Etruscan galleries.”
Bronze balsamarium (perfume jar) in the shape of a female head (late 3rd to early 2nd century B.C.E.) On loan from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Historians also haven’t encountered many written records from the Etruscans. “They wrote plenty, both about themselves and their history,” Dreyfus said. “It was lost because they wrote, primarily, on impermanent material like linen.” That left the Greeks and Romans to tell their story, and “they didn’t always look kindly on the Etruscans,” Dreyfus noted.
The Etruscan language presents another puzzle. Like the Etruscan people, no one knows for sure where it came from. But, in the decade since Dreyfus started working on this exhibition, scholars have grown more adept at translating Etruscan inscriptions—the longest of which will make its U.S. debut at Legion of Honor. Meanwhile, new excavations like those at the spa village of San Casciano dei Bagni continue providing new revelations around Etruscan life.
Bronze appliqué depicting the Sun God Usil (500–475 B.C.E.). On loan from the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
Fewer than 10 of the objects in this May’s exhibition will hail from Legion of Honor’s own collection. Dreyfus joined forces with leading Etruscologist Richard Daniel De Puma to source the rest. “We went searching through storage areas in museums to uncover objects that are not currently on view,” she said. “We wanted people, even those who are experts in the field, to know about some of these unknown or little known objects.” She wants the catalog to serve as the new definitive resource.
“The Etruscans: From the Heart of Ancient Italy” will really begin with an extensive treasure trove from the Regolini-Galassi tomb, one of the most luxurious Etruscan burials ever exhumed, courtesy of the Vatican’s Gregorian Etruscan Museum. Sites like these have proven so useful to scholars “because [the Etruscans] included so much in their tombs,” Dreyfus said. These burials weren’t just lavish sendoffs rife with frescoes and terracotta portraits—they were eternal parties.
Bronze funerary vase in the shape of a female head (225–175 B.C.E.) On loan from the Musée du Louvre.
The exhibition’s crown jewel, however, will be a cache of bronze sculptures recently unearthed from San Casciano dei Bagni. “To have anything from there represents a coup for this museum,” Dreyfus said. Etruscans often left tributes to their gods, which overlapped with the Greek pantheon, while visiting this sacred town.
Archaeologists regularly find relics there featuring both Etruscan and Latin inscriptions—concrete proof of Roman-Etruscan coexistence.
The rest of the chronological show will feature thematic sub-sections, highlighting the Etruscan’s evolving beliefs about the afterlife, the exotic goods they imported from the Phoenicians and Greeks, and more. “We’ll have a section on the opulent gold jewelry that’s going to blow people away,” Dreyfus beamed. It will include a drinking cup decorated with 250,000 gold granules, on loan from London’s Victoria and Albert Museum.
Gold-plated silver and gold finger Ring with the Ambush of Achilles (550–500 B.C.E.) On loan from The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
Metal generated most of the Etruscans’ wealth. Their land was rich in iron, copper, and tin. They became master bronzesmiths and exported their raw materials throughout the Mediterranean. But, their contributions to the region go even deeper. “They were the ones who first learned how to cultivate grapevines and produce wines on the peninsula,” Dreyfus said. “The system of counting that we talk about as Roman numerals was Etruscan numerals.” The Etruscans taught the Romans how to drain marshes and play gladiatorial games. They even gave women the right to own property, run businesses, and retain their last names.
“There’s so many things that we want the world to know about the Etruscans that have been secrets they’ve kept for millennia,” Dreyfus said. Now those secrets are coming too light.
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