Christopher Norton

Around the year 1760, painted Etruscan tombs were discovered in a small town of Corneto near Tarquinia. In response to the increasing interest in archeology and antique relics in the Europe of the Age of Enlightenment, immediately, an album was compiled to document the discoveries. Franciszek Smuglewicz, a recipient of a royal scholarship, participated in its creation. The works present a self-referential situation: an artist drawing a sketch that would serve to create the print we are now admiring. They can also be read as a self-portrait of the artist of the time, in conversation with the antiquity.