Etruscan or not? Content changes -- we have to update what we know and what we teach...

I'm annoyed.  And while I don't usually post this kind of annoyance to the blogosphere, this one touches on the nature of knowledge and search. 

My daughter is taking sophomore Art History in high school.  That's wonderful!  I always enjoyed Art History, enjoying the sweep of styles, time, artistic technology, aesthetics, conceptions of beauty... everything.  

So it was with more than some interest that we reviewed her homework studies of Etruscan art.  (You remember: The predecessors to the Romans, who lived in central Italy between the 9th and 2cnd centuries BCE.)   I throughly enjoy Roman, pre-Roman, post-Roman art.  We saw the usual suspects--funerary sarcophagi, temples, frescoes, and metal statues. 

And that's where it got suddenly dicey.  Her textbook holds up the Capitoline Wolf as a prime example of Etruscan metalworking.  

Thing is, the provenance of this sculpture has been up for debate for a long time (since at least 2005).  

It's now widely believed to have been made in the 1200s, long after the Etruscans were dust in their tombs.  [BBC News.  La Repubblica. Discovery. Spiegel (in Italian). ]

My daughter has a test today in Art History:  What answer should she give when asked about the origin of the Capitoline Wolf?  Etruscan or not?  

Should she write a mini-essay in the margin of the test explaining that the metallurgy is all wrong, and indeed, the style is more Carolingian than Etruscan, and besides, we know the twins were added in 1471.   So the symbolism is a funny composite of messages.  And as a symbol of Rome, it's a much later work than the city itself.  

"The new thesis is that it is a medieval copy of an original Etruscan work," Rome's municipality supervisor for culture, Umberto Broccoli, said.  

He remarked that the Etruscan attribution was first made by 18th-century German art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann on the basis of how the wolf's fur was represented.

Perhaps more importantly from our point of view: How often are textbooks updated?  How often are their facts checked?  

In a world where basic notions about truth and ascription change rapidly, shouldn't we be doing a better job than reproducing incorrect assertions?   If Pluto could be demoted from major planet to dwarf planet, maybe we could fix a few other errors in other topics as well. 

Or at least admit a wider range of responses than is admitted by "When was the Capitoline Wolf sculpted?"  



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See also: 

Lombardi, G. (2002). "A petrographic study of the casting core of the Lupa Capitolina". Archaeometry 44 (4). (X-ray diffractometry, thermal analyses, chemistry and thin sections identify the casting site as being in the lower Tiber valley.)