THE GREGORIAN ETRUSCAN MUSEUM: A LESSON IN METHODOLOGY
Conference with Francesco Roncalli
Tuesday 27 January 2026 – 16.00 Vatican Museums Conference Hall
PRESS RELEASE
Vatican City: on Tuesday 27 January 2026, at 16.00, in the Vatican Museums Conference Hall, the first event of the year in the Thursdays in the Museum programme will take place. The meeting will be dedicated to the Gregorian Etruscan Museum, with a lecture by Francesco Roncalli, who was the Curator of the Museum for around twenty years, from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s.
With this conference, Roncalli will “return” to the Vatican Museums, to dedicate an intimate reflection on methodology focusing on the Museum where he had his first formative experience as an archaeologist and Etruscologist. A student of Giovanni Becatti at the University of Milan and of Massimo Pallottino at La Sapienza, he was also a lecturer in Etruscology and Italic Antiquities at the Universities of Salerno and Perugia, and at Federico II of Naples, of which he is Professor Emeritus. From his very first studies he was drawn to the expressions of Etruscan art, with particular regard to painting, bronze works and clay sculpture. His monographs include Le lastre dipinte da Cerveteri (The Painted Panels of Cerveteri, 1965), and Marte di Todi. Bronzistica etrusca e ispirazione classica (Mars of Todi: Etruscan bronze work and classical inspiration, 1973), as well as a rich chapter dedicated to art in Rasenna, the collective volume on Etruscan civilization edited by Giovanni Pugliese Carratelli (1986). An important chapter is represented by the interest in Etruscan writing culture, which culminated in the Year of the Etruscans (1985) with the exhibition Scrivere etrusco (Writing Etruscan), which presented the most important documents of the Etruscan language, such as the Liber linteus of Zagreb, the Tegola of Capua and the Cippo of Perugia.
Between 1986 and 1991 he curated, with Massimo Montella, for the Umbria region, a series of exhibitions entitled Gens Antiquissima Italiae. These exhibitions – the first was inaugurated in the Vatican, in the Braccio di Carlo Magno, with the subtitle Antiquities from Umbria in the Vatican – focused on Etruscan, Italic and in some cases Roman artefacts from the Umbria region that had migrated through complex collecting histories to various international museums. After the Vatican edition, the exhibition travelled to Budapest, Krakow, Leningrad (which would soon become St. Petersburg) and New York, contextualising the materials present in each location with those on loan from other museums.
Finally, the collection of writings Poesia che tace. Letture e congetture sulla pittura etrusca (Silent Poetry. Readings and Conjectures on Etruscan Painting, 2025) has recently been published, its title inspired by the famous aphorism of the lyric poet Simonides of Ceos quoted by Plutarch: “painting is silent poetry... poetry is painting that speaks”. Born around the mid-6th century BC, Simonides of Ceos is therefore a contemporary of the archaic pictorial cycles to which the Greek masters who had moved to Etruria may also have contributed.
The intellectual journey and personal and original assessment of the illustrious scholar began with a “rethinking” of his years in the Vatican, during which daily contact with certain works that had become his favourites, and the reflections they inspired, led to research on the classics in Etruria, on libri lintei (linen rolls) and the art of writing, on the customs of the haruspices and, more generally, on iconographic themes involving the sphere of artistic production, customs and religion, leading him to question the representations of the afterlife in the ritually separate pictorial space of tombs.
The conference will be chaired by Barbara Jatta, Director of the Vatican Museums. The Curator of the Department of Etruscan-Italic Antiquities, Maurizio Sannibale, who has led the Gregorian Etruscan Museum for around thirty years, will participate in the discussion. Founded and inaugurated by Gregory XVI on 2 February 1837, the Museum – which will shortly celebrate its 200th anniversary – was directed by Roncalli and then by Francesco Buranelli, but even earlier, at the dawn of the 20th century, by Bartolomeo Nogara, pioneer of Etruscology and its first special director, followed by Filippo Magi.
Generations of scholars have measured themselves against the unique nature of the Gregorian Etruscan Museum, given the epochal context of its formation - with objects chosen for their aesthetic quality, material value, documentary uniqueness and artistic significance - and have in various ways traced the history of Etruscan research and classical studies, in this case referring in particular to painted vases, Greek in origin but Etruscan by adoption, which it simultaneously collects.
Roncalli's lecture settles a “debt” in situ, taking on a twofold significance: it promises to be a contemporary reflection on a long, rich and original intellectual journey, which began at the Gregorian Etruscan Museum in the Vatican and then symbolically returned there, consigning it to its history at the same time.
The lecture will be followed by a visit to the Gregorian Etruscan Museum. The lecture will be streamed at: https://www.youtube.com/@MuseiVaticaniMv/streams
ACCREDITATION AND PARTICIPATION PROCEDURE
Journalists and media operators who wish to participate must apply, no later than 24 hours before the event, via the Holy See Press Office online accreditation system, at: press.vatican.va/accreditamenti
Entrance for journalists and accredited media operators: from Viale Vaticano upon presentation of accreditation, from 15:30 to 16:00.
Contacts
Press Office: stampa.musei@scv.va
