Meet Seianti. Her nose is rather prettier than it should be. Her mouth is a little smaller and more girlish. She has shed a few years 鈥� and at least one double chin. But although the sculptor who shaped this face from terracotta made a few flattering improvements, he captured Seianti鈥檚 likeness remarkably well. This face belonged to a real woman, a short, podgy, middle-aged Etruscan aristocrat who died around 2200 years ago.
When Seianti died, she was buried in a huge terracotta casket topped by the life-sized figure of a woman reclining on a soft pillow, a bronze mirror in her jewelled hand. In 1887, the British Museum bought the sarcophagus 鈥� complete with skeleton. For years, there have been doubts about whether the bones actually belonged to Seianti Hanunia Tlesnasa, the woman whose name was engraved on the casket. And if they did, was the reclining figure really her? Modern forensic techniques have finally provided the answers.
SEIANTI was a woman of substance. She came from a noble and conspicuously wealthy Etruscan family. She was substantial in other ways too: by the time she reached middle age she had piled on the pounds. Rich Etruscans liked nothing better than a good binge at the banquet and Seianti was no exception. That wasn鈥檛 the only reason for her growing portliness, however. In her youth, she had been fit and active, athletic even. But a terrible accident had left her with injuries that led to painful arthritis and an increasingly sedentary life.
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When Seianti died, she had the sort of send-off only a wealthy woman could expect. She was buried in a fantastic sarcophagus in her own personal tomb, cut from the rock in the hills near the Etruscan city of Chiusi in central Italy. In 1886, a local 鈥渄igger鈥� discovered the tomb. The contents ended up in the hands of a dealer 鈥� who sold them to the British Museum for 拢450.
A century later, a team of specialists led by the museum鈥檚 Etruscan expert, Judith Swaddling, and archaeologist John Prag from the Manchester Museum began to take a closer look at the famous Etruscan lady. And by the end of last year, Seianti had both a face and a past.
The original plan was to reconstruct the face of the woman in the coffin. This was a job for Richard Neave, then director of the Unit of Art in Medicine at the University of Manchester and an expert in recreating faces from the bare bones of the skull. The reconstruction would allow comparison of the dead woman鈥檚 face with the painted effigy and so answer a long-standing question: were these terracotta people real portraits of the dead?
The figures on some Etruscan sarcophaguses are so alike they probably came from the same mould. But there are a few that can only have been one-offs, where the figures are disconcertingly human. 鈥淵ou get the impression you are looking at real people,鈥� says Prag. How else would you explain the appearance of Laris Pulena, a man with a paunch, a scowl and the look of a used-car salesman. 鈥淲hy else would an artist make out someone was a big fat slob of a man if he wasn鈥檛?鈥�
Seianti looks believably real too, with her double chin and meaty upper arm. 鈥淗er arm with its rolls of flesh and creases 鈥� I doubt you鈥檇 find a more realistic arm anywhere in classical sculpture,鈥� says Swaddling. Unlike the other sarcophaguses, Seianti鈥檚 came with an almost perfect set of bones, providing a unique opportunity to check just how realistic the figure was.
On first examination, the team鈥檚 anthropologist suggested that the occupant had been a woman about 150 centimetres tall. And from the wear on her pelvis, extensive bony growths and almost total toothlessness he put her age at about 80 or 90. With a cast of the skull and an idea of her age, Neave began to build up the woman鈥檚 face in clay, adding one muscle at a time according to strict anatomical rules. He added soft tissue consistent with a woman of her great age, ending up with a lined and very ancient face. It was hard to see a resemblance.
But when a colleague at Manchester, pathologist Bob Stoddart, began to scrutinise the skeleton he concluded that she was not old but middle-aged. The damage and wear on her bones had been misleading. They weren鈥檛 signs of age but of old injuries.
The woman had a rider鈥檚 physique, with robust thigh bones and evidence of powerful muscles in her upper leg and lower back, developed through gripping with thighs and knees. But around the right side of her hip and lower part of the spine was a mass of little bony knobs. These form in soft tissue after a crushing injury with severe internal bleeding. The head of the right thigh bone was also damaged, with a highly polished patch where it rubbed against its socket in the pelvis.
To Stoddart, these bony changes pointed to one thing: a riding accident in which the horse fell on Seianti, forcing her right leg up and outward, twisting the thigh bone and slamming its head into the socket. No bones were broken but the whole right side of the leg and hip was crushed against the ground. In later life these injuries would have given rise to painful arthritis and increasing disability.
Seianti鈥檚 misery as she grew older was compounded by tooth troubles. Her accident seems to have knocked out the teeth of her right lower jaw and damaged the bone where it joins the skull. Opening her mouth wide would have been painful, preventing her from eating anything other than soups and gruels and from keeping her remaining teeth clean. Most of them eventually fell out.
To settle the question of age, the museum sent two surviving teeth to David Whittaker at the University of Wales College of Medicine in Cardiff. He has developed a highly accurate method of determining age from measurements of the dentine in the tooth. The teeth confirmed that Seianti was about 50 when she died.
Neave reconstructed a new face 鈥� knocking off 40 years and adding more flesh as befitted a younger woman who had grown rather obese. Then came the acid test. How did the newly reconstructed face compare with that of the terracotta figure? Not well from the side. The ancient artist had played fast and loose with Seianti鈥檚 nose, giving her the profile of a Greek goddess rather than an Etruscan matron. The resemblance was clearer from the front. The artist had 鈥渋mproved鈥� her mouth and eyes and slimmed her jowly neck. But there were definite similarities.
The team didn鈥檛 have to rely on their eyes, however. Neave has developed a computerised technique with the police for matching faces based on the fact that the proportions between features are determined by the underlying skull. Take the masked face of a bank robber captured on a security camera and the face of a suspect, and the computer will turn them this way and that, checking how far apart the eyes are, the distance from nose to chin and so on. If the distances match, so do the faces.
After subjecting Seianti鈥檚 two faces to the computer鈥檚 photocomparison, there was no doubt they belonged to the same person. The original artist may have indulged in a little flattery, but he didn鈥檛 mess about with the basic proportions. 鈥淭here is no doubt the artist intended it as a true likeness,鈥� says Prag.
Case closed? Not quite. There were still a few who thought 鈥淪eianti鈥檚 skeleton鈥� was a little too good to be true. In the 19th century, a sarcophagus with a skeleton fetched a better price than an empty one, tempting diggers to add one of their own. To dispel all doubt, the museum sent a tiny piece of rib for carbon dating last summer. The result placed the body between 250 and 150 BC. 鈥淭he carbon date shows that this wasn鈥檛 just any old stiff shoved in to please the buyer,鈥� says Prag. It was Seianti. It also makes Seianti鈥檚 sculpted face the earliest identifiable portrait in the western world.