Fiesole stones

Description

The Pietre fiesolane (Fiesole Stones) are funerary markers placed at Etruscan tombs referable to upper-class people; the name designates a series of monuments characteristic of the Mugello, Florentine and Pistoia areas, carved in yellow or gray sandstone, commonly called pietra serena. The Stones have been found throughout the northern part of the Florentine Arno basin, concentrated along the most important routes and at the surveillance points of the roads. Some stones have either an unworked part to be embedded in the ground or one shaped for embedding in a base, and we can imagine them erected vertically in an open place and clearly visible. Because of the shape of the support, slab or parallelepiped, the Fiesole Stones can be distinguished into stelae and cippus; the stelae are finished at the top by a palmette, that is, a fan of leaves arising from two juxtaposed spirals, and are square-shaped for men and elongated teardrop-shaped for women; while the cippus, probably reserved for men, have four rectangular faces and a crowning made in the shape of a bulb. The figure-carved decoration, with strands of leaves or braids or spirals, increased the cost of the stone in proportion to the work of the sculptor and thus was more or less abundant according to the importance of the personage and the wealth of his or her household; we cannot say with certainty whether the images are human or divine, but they certainly impersonate the deceased themselves, and the robes and insignia specify their role in society and family. In a few cases we know the names of the deceased, engraved on the edges of the monument; where they are missing, they were probably indicated by painted inscriptions that have faded over time. The bodies, robes, objects, animals, and decorative parts must also have been colored in paint, with a polychromy full of life, though based on a few colors: black, blue, red, yellow, and white