Vatican Museums

The first event of the year of the cultural programme Thursdays in the Museums will be dedicated to the Gregorian Etruscan Museum, with a conference with Francesco Roncalli, who was the Curator of the Museum for around twenty years from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s.

With “The Gregorian Etruscan Museum. A lesson in methodology”, Francesco Roncalli “returns” to the Vatican Museums with an intimate reflection on method, focusing on the museum linked to his first formative experience as an archaeologist and Etruscologist.
A student of Giovanni Becatti at the University of Milan, and of Massimo Pallottino at Sapienza, Roncalli was a lecturer in Etruscology and Italic Antiquities at the Universities of Salerno, Perugia, and 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). 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.
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 (mid-6th century BC) quoted by Plutarch: “painting is silent poetry... poetry is painting that speaks”.

Barbara Jatta, Director of the Vatican Museums, will introduce the conference. 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 will shortly celebrate its 200th anniversary.
The Roncalli conference will fulfil a “debt” in situ, taking on a twofold significance: it promises to be a current reflection on a long, rich and original intellectual journey, which began at the Vatican's Gregorian Etruscan Museum and then symbolically returned there, consigning it at the same time to its history.
The conference will be followed by a visit to the Gregorian Etruscan Museum.