Anatomical Votives
The Anatomical Votives of the Stieda Collection
Ludwig Stieda was born in Riga into a merchant family. He studied medicine and received numerous distinctions during his academic training, including awards for his anatomical research. After earning his doctorate in 1861, he continued his studies in Giessen, Vienna, and Erlangen before taking up a teaching position in anatomy at Dorpat (present-day Tartu). In 1885, he was appointed full professor and director of the Anatomical Institute in Königsberg. He returned to Giessen in 1912 and died there in 1918 on his eighty-first birthday. Stieda’s friendship with the classical philologist Alfred Körte played a decisive role in his decision to travel to Italy in 1899 in order to study Etruscan votive offerings. During this journey, he acquired numerous anatomical votives in Isola Farnese, which he donated to the Collection of Classical Antiquities in 1913. The collection originally comprised around sixty objects, although some were lost in the aftermath of the Second World War. Approximately forty pieces have survived, and a representative selection is now displayed in the permanent exhibition. |
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The Site The Etruscan city of Veii was situated on a plateau approximately 15 km north-west of Rome, near the modern village of Isola Farnese. The earliest archaeological finds indicate that the area was already inhabited during the Late Bronze Age. Veii itself shows evidence of continuous occupation from the so-called Villanovan period (ninth/eighth century BC) onward. From the sixth century BC, the city prospered considerably, largely owing to the production and trade of salt. Veii possessed numerous public buildings, temples, and sanctuary complexes. Continuous conflicts with Rome ultimately led to the city’s conquest by the Romans in 396 BC, marking the decline of this highly developed Italic culture. Nevertheless, archaeological evidence demonstrates that the area remained inhabited into the Hellenistic period. The anatomical votives, dating from the late fourth to the mid-third century BC, together with several examples from the second century BC, were discovered within the sanctuary area, specifically in the Pendici deposit at the Piazza d’Armi.
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The Votives In addition to figural representations interpreted as swaddled infants, the collection includes a wide range of anatomical votives, including heads, limbs, eyes, ears, male genitalia, and internal organs. Some of these organs can be identified with relative certainty, such as representations of the uterus, whereas others are more difficult to interpret and have been understood in different ways. Certain highly stylised objects, for example, have been identified both as hearts and as sacrificial cakes. A particularly noteworthy feature of the collection is the group of visceral plaques, which depict combinations of internal organs, as well as partially draped torsos that reveal the interior of the body through a window-like opening. The function of such votive offerings, which are known in comparable forms from regions extending from Gaul to Greece and Cyprus, has long been the subject of scholarly debate. Interpretations range from prayers for the health and recovery of the dedicant and their family to expressions of gratitude toward a deity for divine assistance received. Contrary to earlier assumptions, however, these objects generally do not display signs of pathological alterations to the represented body parts. |
