Scientific Analyses Suggest Florence's Arringatore Bronze Was Intentionally Blackened 2,200 Years Ago

Key facts

• The Arringatore is a late 1st-century BC Etruscan bronze measuring 179 cm, housed in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Florence
• Restorers found black areas under later brown layers on the face, hair, clothing and arms, some darker than their coating
• Testing detected tenorite, a copper oxide responsible for black-to-grey color
• Researchers describe an intentionally applied dark patina and traces of controlled heating on the surviving surface
• The statue was discovered near Lake Trasimeno in 1567 and was likely green at that time
• Giorgio Vasari presented it to Cosimo I de' Medici; it entered the Palazzo Pitti collections and moved to the Uffizi in 1588
• It joined the national collections in 1871 and is displayed with the Chimera and the Minerva of Arezzo
• An Etruscan inscription on the toga's lower band identifies the figure as Aule Meteli; an earlier link to Scipio Africanus has been disproved
• Françoise-Hélène Massa-Pairault of the CNRS proposes the raised-arm gesture depicts an Etruscan seeking Roman citizenship