La Chimera

Aris has created a tribute to Riparbella’s Etruscan origins. The mural painted in Via della Noce draws its inspiration from the collection held in the C’ERA Museum — Centro Espositivo Riparbella Antica, which shows finds from the settlement of Belora: the vases in particular, everyday artefacts and evidence of Etruscan civilisation.

Aris is an urban artist whose research works with different media. In recent years he has concentrated on reclaiming the icon of the vase, on working with ceramics and on depicting profiles and two-tone forms. Bringing an ancient artefact, and an aesthetic that belongs to Etruscan, Greek and Roman origins, back into the present shows how strongly alive our past still is today.

The work is also a homage to Pietro Leopoldo, Grand Duke of Tuscany. In 1768 the Grand Duke bought the Galluzzi collection, the first substantial group of Etruscan antiquities — mainly terracotta vases and small bronzes — intended for the creation of an Etruscan Museum at the Uffizi Gallery.

It was in the atmosphere of that court that in 1789 the abbot Luigi Lanzi published the Saggio di lingua etrusca e di altre antiche d’Italia , dedicated to Pietro Leopoldo himself, who the following year appointed him Royal Antiquary of the Galleries. Modern Etruscology begins with those studies.

The mural was created thanks to the funding obtained by Pro Loco Riparbella through the Tuscany Region’s call for the celebrations marking the 260th anniversary of Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo of Tuscany.