Light and vision inside the Tomba degli Hescanas, Orvieto (Porano), 350–325 BCE

Abstract

Etruscan painted tombs provide the most well-preserved corpus of figurative wall paintings in the ancient Mediterranean. Today, Etruscan painted tombs remain largely understood from iconographic, epigraphic, and typological perspectives. Such approaches often emphasise the presumed meaning of images, objects, or words inside the tomb, rather than how the tomb space was cognitively experienced by funerary participants. One of the most profound ways we can consider the painted tomb is through the prism of light. Indeed, specific types of lighting inside the tomb space structured and, at times, likely even manipulated the painted tomb experience.This article draws on digital photography and scaled photogrammetric models of painted tombs to explore how light and imagery intersect inside the painted tomb as guided by visual perception. One painted tomb is presented as a case study, the Tomba degli Hescanas located outside of modern Orvieto in the commune of Porano, Italy. The analysis provides an entirely new avenue of research pertaining to the funerary experience in Etruria and emphasises the importance of considering sensory percepts to investigate the archaeological record.