Winged Lion of Vulci
Unknown · c. 550-540 BC
A roaring lion with a pair of wings folded against its flanks stands on a low plinth, its tongue hanging from its open jaws. The stone is nenfro, a soft grey volcanic tuff quarried around Vulci, which weathers easily, so the surface is eroded and the left ear, part of the jaw and the hindquarters have suffered. Even so the animal keeps its threat: the mane is carved in tight rows of locks, the ribs are marked, and the eyes glare. At just over a metre tall it was made to be looked up to.
Lions and other beasts like this were set at the entrances of tombs in the necropolises of Vulci in the sixth century before Christ, guardians borrowed from the art of the Near East and Greece and reinterpreted by Etruscan sculptors. The museum dates it to about five hundred and fifty to five hundred and forty before Christ, in the archaic period. It was acquired by purchase in nineteen seventy five. Head, jaw, paws and base have been glued back, so what you see is a careful reassembly of a monument that once guarded the dead.
Did You Know? Nenfro is so soft that the lion's roar has slowly worn away, yet head, jaw, paws and base were all found and glued back together.
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