After 75 years, one of the most astonishing testimonies of Etruscan art is once again available to the public: Carlo Ruspi's life-size copy of the Campanari Tomb of Vulci, created between 1835 and 1837, has been restored to permanent display at the Vatican Museums' Gregorian Etruscan Museum. The painting depicting the scenario with Hades and Persephone is all that survives of the tomb discovered in 1833 and later destroyed. Ruspi, a nineteenth-century artist and archaeologist, was a pioneer in the field of Etruscan pictorial documentation, working inside tombs with rudimentary tools but exceptional precision. The official unveiling of the restored work will take place tomorrow. The restoration, which was the product of extensive multidisciplinary labor, has restored stability and legibility to the delicate piece, which is now mounted on a new protective base. Its relocation represents the beginning of a larger effort to improve the historical copies of Ruspi, which are genuine masterpieces of visual archeology and memory.
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