Shadow folk

Etruscan votive (= offered to the gods) bronze figurines from the Archaeological Museum of Fiesole. Small, light-footed, slender figures—refined, through endless repetition, into their purest, most elemental forms, like the letters of a handwritten script. Grotesque and cheerful at once. Yet they are not mere objects, not little knick-knacks for a shelf. Each one stands here in place of a real…