Image Details

Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY

Etruscan women enjoyed a degree of freedom unheard of in the Greek and Roman worlds. They sang, they danced, they dined with men—and, if certain ancient authors are to be believed, they were sexually loose. A sense of joyous freedom is conveyed by the Etruscan bronze handle, carved in the shape of a nude acrobat. Dating to the fourth century B.C.E., it is now in St. Petersburg’s Hermitage museum.