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A Charun Head in Ischia Di Castro

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A Charun Head in Ischia Di Castro A CHARUN HEAD IN ISCHIA DI CASTRO (Con le tavv. XIII-XV f. t.) In the Museo Comunale at Ischia di Castro the first room is used for the finds from the 1961 and 1967 excavations of the ruins of Castro (1). This was a flourishing town in the 16th century and enjoyed a period of fine architecture during the dukeship of Pier Luigi Farnese, the son of Pope Alexander III, when Antonio di Sangallo the Elder designed and built its central piazza and adjoining buildings. In 1659 the town was sacked and demolished by the troops of Pope Innocent X as a result of a feud between the Duke of Castro and the Pope, the only remaining trace being a column with the inscription ‘ Qui fu Castro ’ (2). For many centuries the ruins of the town have lain waste and are now hidden by a forest. The excavations of 1961 and 1967 were minor projects and have never been published in extenso. Among the many fragments, including the coat of arms of the Farnese family and medieval church sculpture, one piece stands out on account of its individual style. It is the upper part of the head of a wild-looking man (tavv. XIII-XIV). The material is nenfro, the very soft dark grey volcanic stone used extensively by the Etruscans for sculpture and sarcophagi (3) but also used in the medieval sculpture of the Castro region. The surviving height is 23,5 cm, the depth is 28 cm and the width from ear to ear is 24 cm, i.e. a head of super-human size. The head is broken off through the cheeks and the mouth. The break is, however, blurred by the remaining part of the beard, and the details are not very clear (tav. XIII a). The beard seems to have been broken off, and the neck I wish to thank the Soprintendente of Southern Etruria Doctor Mario Moretti for his kind permission to publish the Charun head from Ischia di Castro. (1) P. Mezzet t i et al., in Boll. Stor. Maremma XVI, 1967, p. 42 sqq.; S. Tadolini, in Atti Acc. Naz. San Luca 1961, p. 3 sqq. (2) S. Tadolini, Colloqui del Sodalizio se. 2, 2 1968-70, pp. 85-95; E. Stendardi, in Memorie storiche della distrutta città di Castro*2 , 31Viterbo 1959; C. Lanzi, in Memorie Storiche sulla regione castrense, 1938; P. Aimo - R. Clementi, in Boll. Stor. Maremma XXIII, 1971-1972, p. 51 sqq. (3) A. Hus, Recherches sur la statuaire en piene étrusque archaïque, Paris 1961, p. 446. 66 Μ. Maltesen worked over with a chisel. The back of the head shows an even break which gives the impression that the sculpture was not originally free-standing. On the top of the head the surface has been worked over with a very broad chisel going through the light patina which covers the broken edges (tav. XIV c), while the front part of the skull is naturally worn. Over the forehead a hole can be seen into which something must originally have been fixed, possibly a piece of bronze. Apart from the nose the face itself is very well preserved, and even the polished painted surface is visible in various places. On the forehead, cheeks, temples and nose-bridge the colour is dark bluish-black, while the iris’ of the eyes are rendered as red rings (diam. 2,5 cm). There are other traces of red in the right ear, in the wrinkles of the outer corners of the eyes and on the thick domed part of the upper forehead. It is immediately obvious that this is not the rendering of a normal human being, as is shown by the narrow pointed donkey ears, the large protruding eyes, the low wrinkled forehead, the heavy arched eyebrows meeting in a knot over the nose, the high protruding cheekbones and the hair which stands out in broad strands around the face. All these features show that the figure represents an Etruscan demon — probably Charun. This is further emphasized by the dark blue colour of the skin, which is characteristic of the painted pictures of this demon and might signify the colour of death (4), and the band that lies around the hair and ends in the hole above the forehead. The band was probably a stylized snake, the hole being used to attach a knot which might have ended in freestanding snakes’ heads such as we see in painted representations of the 4th century B.C. and onwards (5). He is characterized by his wild features: horse or donkey ears (6), large beak-like nose (7), his untidy hair and beard standing out round his head and often adorned by snakes with swaying ‘ hissing ’ heads, by his dress, a short tunic with a crossband over the chest, and by the hammer he holds in his hand. This demon type has its ancestors in Greece, in the wild centaurs with wrinkled foreheads and brows, horses ears, and untidy hair and beards (8); and also in the Gorgo with its bared threatening teeth. The iconographie type (4) Paus. X, 28, 7 sqq. mentions that the demon Eurynomos in the Nekyia by Polygnotos was bluish black in the head del like a bluebottle. (5) F. De Ruyt, Charun, demon étrusque de la mort, Roma 1934; W. Her big, Gotter und Dämonen der Etrusker, Heidelberg 1948, p. 22 sqq.; A. Pfiffig, Religio Etrusca, Graz 1975, pp. 332-36; EAA II, 1959, pp. 356-58. (6) Perhaps an allusion to the horse as a death symbol, S. Fer r i, in Ann. Sc. Pisa, 1933, p. 156. (7) For the enlargement of single features, Fer r i, in Ann. Sc. Pisa 1932, p. 296. (8) Her big, op. cit.. p. 22. A Charun Head, in Ischia di Castro 67 lasts down into the Christian era, and many representations of Satan can be traced back to Charun-like demons. The type has been studied by De Ruyt, who demonstrates the different functions of the demon from the many repre- sentations in tomb-paintings, on vases, and in reliefs on sarcophagi and ash- urns. Charun is seen as an onlooker in mythological scenes of violent death or in scenes of the deceased bidding his family farwell; in some cases he is represented as actively tearing the dead person away by force. His most pronounced function is that of the psychopompos, who either alone or in a procession, leads the soul to the land of the dead. A similar significance can be attributed to instances where one or two Charuns guard the door of the grave, waiting to lead the soul away (9). In 1974 a sensational find came to light at Cerveteri in the locality of Greppe di Sant Angelo. Here a magnificent grave-complex was unearthed with a “ piazza ” in front of it, in which the first full size sculpture of Charun (or his cousin Tuchulcha) was found (10) {tav. XV a). After being restored, the statue has recently been placed in the museum of Cerveteri. The figure measures 135 cm including the rectangular plinth (12 cm heigh). The lower part of the arms from the elbow and down are missing. Characteristic of the figure are the pointed ears, the large protruding eyes, the wrinkled brows, the wild hair and beard and the enormous beak-like nose. He is hunchbacked and bandy-legged and wears a short tunic with short sleeves and bands laid crosswise over the chest. On the left side of the breast is the head and upper part of a snake; its tail can be seen on the hem of the left side of the tunic. From the style of the figure and the context in which it was found the statue is dated to the 4th.-3rd cent. B.C. The figure was free-standing and had a counterpart, of which only fragments have been found, much alike. The two were found together with other sculptures representing animals: two lions and two sphinxes, often used as protectors of Etruscan graves. Prayon(ll) stresses that the ‘ Tuchulcha grave ’ is of a type not usually found in Cerveteri. It is characterized by the fact that the burial chamber is placed under ground level with access through a dromos, while there are one or more false doors on the ground level. These false doors represent the actual doors of the tomb and are sometimes flanked by death demons, as in the Tomba dei Charonti in Tarquinia where floating Charuns are painted on either side of the two false doors (12). In the Cerveteri tomb complex there (9) F. Prayon, Antike Welt, 1975, pp. 17-26; De Ruyt, op. cit., p. 45 sqq. no. 37, 38 and perhaps no. 1 where traces of feet on either side of the door may have belonged to flanking demons; Μ. Pallottino, in St. Etr. XXXII, 1964, p. 108 sqq. (10) Il Messaggero 4, 5, 11 sept. 1974; Prayon, loc. cit. (11) Prayon, op. cit., p. 26. (12) Moretti, N. Mon., p. 300. 68 M. Moltesen seems to have been an open piazza in front of the false doors, where the sculptures were placed in pairs, and one could surmise that the Charun figures were the ones flanking the doors while the animals were standing in the piazza protecting the grave. We may wonder whether the Charun from Castro had the same function. The super-human size speaks against a free-standing statue, which would have been approximately 2,5 m high. On examining the back of the head (tav. XIV zz) one notices that the hair falls in long strands behind the ears, following the slope of the neck, and that behind it there is a narrow protruding edge from which the break starts.
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