Il paesaggio del conflitto nell'arte delle situle

The landscape of conflict in the Art of situlae. The aim of this paper is to carry on a transversal analysis on some documents of the “Arte delle Situle”, in order to move away from the more usual methods of analysis, generally centred on single documents or single iconographic sequences. We look for a connection between the landscape and the stories told in the images that appears in a more or less visible manner in scenes of conflict. Some already known documents are examined, such as the Situla Benvenuti from Este, the situla Arnoaldi from Bologna, the situla from tomb 5/2012 in Montebelluna and, as the only case on a clay support, the vase from tomb Alfonsi 13 in Este. In all these examples, animal or plant elements symbolize characteristics of the landscape, sometimes in a realistic way, sometimes from a metaphorical or symbolic. A special case is represented by the decorative cycle that connects some objects from the grave goods of tombs 23 and 36/1984 of the Casa di Ricovero necropolis in Este, where the absence of landscape elements can perhaps be traced back to the fable-like sphere of the depiction. In other cases, the identification of the landscape seems to reinforce the hypothesis of a narration through images of realities close to the clients and their desire to preserve the memory of events worthy of being handed down.