Statues, busts, faces, body parts: these are the ex-voto that the devout Etruscans of Veio offered as gifts to the deities to whom they had entrusted themselves. The variety of depictions can be found in the broader panorama of devotional objects, gifts with a strong symbolic value that have accompanied the relationship between man and the entities to which the ability to change fate is attributed for millennia and at every latitude.

The collection of ex-votos from the city of Veio arrived at the Museum in 1894 where it was exhibited until the 1980s. Today, it is being rediscovered thanks to a research project that, also through advanced analysis techniques, adds new data to previous knowledge.

The display in the Archaeology Room harks back to 19th-century museology, interweaving it with contemporary elements to showcase the devotional objects in the collection.
A suggestive video mapping returns to the faces of the offerers the chromaticism identified in the analyses performed by the DI.AR Laboratory with the most advanced multispectral techniques, carried out for the first time on Etruscan votive terracotta, and is part of that relationship between culture, art and digital media that has led Modena to become a Unesco Creative City for Media Arts.
The installation realised by Delumen combines a philological approach with one of free interpretation. On the one hand, the video projection restores the votive heads to their original colouring, starting with the specimens on which traces of polychromy are preserved. On the other, through sounds and faint voices, it secretly connects us in space and time to the most intimate desires and aspirations of the women and men of this ancient past.

The different languages, resulting from synergies between different disciplines and skills, offer the audience an experience of discovery and knowledge.

(Photos by Paolo Terzi, Rosario Santimone, Elena Roveda)