Vatican Museums

This bronze male statuette, dating from the second half of the fourth century B.C., is characterised by an inscription in Etruscan dedicated to the God Selvans along the right leg, and possibly represents the same God. It was previously part of the collection of Cardinal Gaspare Carpegna (1625-1714) and was discovered at the end of the seventeenth century, in the area at the border between Emilia Romagna, the Marches and Tuscany, in Scaulino, present-day Scavolino, at Pennabilli in the province of Rimini, the historic residence of a branch of the Carpegna family. Selvans is a male divinity from the Etruscan pantheon (possibly equivalent to the Roman Silvanus), linked to forests and hunting, protector of border regions and mentioned in the chthonic and catactonic spheres of the Liver of Piacenza.