The Director of Antiquities and Fine Arts of Italy (!), Guglielmo de Angelis D'Ossat, describes this collection as "More than a chest filled with wonderful jewels, more than an imaginary museum, [The Splendors] is a living reality."

How extraordinary that the woo-woo Etruscans -- with their sexual liberality and freedom, their comforting soothsayers, and colorful arts -- would be succeeded in Italy by the Romans.

And how extraordinary that Romans -- with their anonymous engineers building roads and baths, and their centurions pacifying kings -- would in turn be succeeded by...Italians!

Italian Art derives from ancient Greek and Etruscan insights. Greeks apparently began colonizing the Campania in 730 BC. Although we know of no central authority requiring Greek artists to obey their conventions, from its most primitive stage, the Greeks throughout the Hellenic world, developed their arts in very similar ways, adopting very similar forms.

The Etruscan civilization suddenly appeared in central Italy (Tuscany). Whether peoples arrived from Lydia (as Herodotus suggests), or whether they were sons of Circe, the enchantress, (as Hesiod explains), or whether they were indigenous, we do know that suddenly Etruscans began richly decorating the funeral chambers of their dead. Previously, the inhabitants burned the dead and placed the ashes in clay "huts".[8]

To this day, the few Etruscan texts left behind are not much deciphered. It is art and archeology which opens the Etruscan door to us.

This book begins in those Greek trading centers, the Temples, and Etruscan graves. It then steps through classical Rome to the adorations of the Christians, particularly the Byzantines. The surprising Gothic period, at the turn of the 13th century producing Dante, Pisano and Giotto, all reflecting the transformation taking place. Then a pause as plagues swept Italy and emptied the cities, only to once again become favorable for the arrival of the renaissance in which Italy took such a splendid role.

The period of the Reformation -- in Italy in the form of the "Counter-Reformation" -- is then revealed. The book concludes with the 17th and 18th centuries, Baroque and Neo-classicism.