Etruscan angels

They stand in the main square of the old town, at the city hall entrance, in front of the Church of St. Michael, by the medieval laundry, in the Etruscan museum, and in the cloister courtyard of the art gallery. Men, women, and horses. It’s as if they were grotesque figures from László Réber's works – vulnerable yet protective, like angels or perhaps the genius spirits of the forgotten Etruscan mythology, the faceless, worn-down figures on the small sarcophagi of the Etruscan museum. Their shapes recall Etruscan figurines – not the slender elegance of the Evening Shadow, certainly not that, but rather their solidity, the lack of segmentation, the essential unity with the stones of the city, which they seem to repopulate, or perhaps they’ve always been here. Paolo Staccioli’s ceramic and bronze sculptures recreate a lost past in the squares of Volterra and the time capsules of its museums.