Votive Pomegranate

I mentioned the Etruscans yesterday and their votive statuettes up in the museum in Fiesole. In order to use a photo from yesterday I have created a new photomontage today by photographing a Sicilian pomegranate bought from the Coop in Fiz and superimposing on it an Etruscan votive statue in bronze.

The statues had a particular symbolic format. In the left hand they hold a pomegranate - melagrana in Italian. The right hand is turned palm down to the earth. 

According to a sign in the museum the right hand gesture is an acknowledgement of some earthly god and the pomegranate recalls Ade (Hades?), brother of Zeus and Poseidon,  a god of the underworld who fed  seeds of the pomegranate to Prosperina  to stop her abandoning him and returning the world of the living. The six seeds he fed her meant that she had to stay half the time in the underworld and half the time in the world of the living according to this particular version of the myth which is set in Sicily.
https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Painting-Ade-and-Proserpina/55929/1318202/view


The pointed hat (tutulus) is also typical of the Etruscan mode, as are the upward pointing shoes which are not visible in my little composition.

The earliest statues are from the VI/V centuries BC.