Shadow folk

Etruscan votive (= offered to the gods) bronze figurines from the Archaeological Museum of Fiesole.

Small, light-footed, slender figures—refined, through endless repetition, into their purest, most elemental forms, like the letters of a handwritten script. Grotesque and cheerful at once. Yet they are not mere objects, not little knick-knacks for a shelf. Each one stands here in place of a real person, representing a moment of great need when divine help was sought: in illness, at a turning point in life, before a sporting contest, in the hope of victory that meant everything. A tiny, anxious people of shadows. The humans have long since vanished; only these remain—still clutching their troubles, no longer knowing for whom or where they should lay them down.