Bronze statuette of a reclining banqueter

Feasts, with music and entertainment, were important in Etruscan life, and scenes of banqueting are common in Etruscan art. Feasts depicted on the walls of tombs may represent funerary feasts or feasting inthe afterlife, though other representations seem to be everyday social occasions. This bronze figurine may have been placed as a dedication in a shrine or sanctuary. The bronze banqueter reclines on a couch, in a way that was typical in the Classical world. His pose, like that of other Etruscan bronzes of the Archaic period, is elegant but rather stiff. He has an impressive and carefully delineated beard and moustache, and is dressed in a decorated chiton or tunic. The bowl that he holds is of the type used both at banquets and for libations - the offering of small quantities of liquids, such as wine, to the gods.