period except in variety of decoration. The technique and ornament are the same as in the case of the urns. They correspond in development, though not in date, to the early pottery of Troy and Cyprus, as well as to the primitive pottery of other races, but one marked difference is the general fondness of the Italian potter for vases with handles.
Sometimes the cinerary urns take the form of huts (tuguria), though these are more often found in the neighbourhood of Rome. One of the best examples is in the British Museum; it still contains ashes which were inserted through a little door secured by a cord passing through rings. The ornamentation suggests the rude carpentry of a primitive hut, the cover or roof being vaulted with raised ridges to represent the beams. The surface is polished, and other specimens are occasionally painted with patterns in white.
In the next stage a change is seen in the form of the tombs, the pit being replaced by a trench; this is accordingly known as the “trench-tomb” or a fossa period, and extends from the 8th century B.C. to the beginning of the 6th. Importations of Greek pottery now first make their appearance. The character of the local pottery actually remains for some time the same as that of the preceding period, but it improves in technique. By degrees an improvement in the forms is also noted, and new varieties of ornamentation are introduced; there is, however, no evidence that the wheel was used.
Two entirely new classes of pottery are found at Cervetri (Caere) belonging to the 7th century. One consists of large jars (πίθοι) of red ware, the lower part being moulded in ribs, while the upper has bands of design stamped round it in groups or friezes. These designs were either produced from single stamps or rolled out from cylinders like those used in Babylonia. The subjects are usually quasi-oriental in character, and it is not certain that this ware was made in Etruria, especially as similar vases have been found in Rhodes and Sicily; either it was imported, or it was a local imitation of Greek models.
The other class is similar as regards the shapes and the nature of the clay, but is distinguished by having painted subjects in white outlines on a red glossy ground. The clay, a kind of impasto Italico, was first hardened by baking, and then a mixture of wax, resin and iron oxide was applied and polished; on this the pigments, a mixture of chalk and earth, were laid. The subjects are from Greek mythology or are at least Greek in character, but the technique is purely Etruscan, and the drawing is crude and un-Greek in the extreme.
The fourth period shows a close continuity with the third; but the difference is defined firstly by the appearance of a new type of tomb in the form of a chamber (a camera), secondly, by the all-pervading influence of oriental art, and to a less extent of that of the Greeks. The period extends from about 650 to 550 B.C., and is further marked by the general introduction of the wheel into Etruria and by the appearance of inscriptions in an alphabet derived from western Greece. In the earlier tombs the typical local pottery is of hand-made impasto Italico resembling that of the previous periods; in the later we find what is known as bucchero ware—the national pottery of Etruria—which is made on the wheel and baked in a furnace, and shows a marked tendency to imitate metal.
To this period also belongs the famous Polledrara tomb or Grotto d’lside at Vulci, the contents of which are now in the British Museum and include some remarkable specimens of pottery. It dates from about 620–610 B.C. The most remarkable of the vases is a hydria, of reddish-brown clay covered with a lustrous black slip on which have been painted designs in red, blue and a yellowish white. The colours have unfortunately now almost disappeared, and it is doubtful if they had been fired. The principal subject is from the story of Theseus and Ariadne. This tomb also contained a large wheel-made pithos of red impasto ware with designs painted in polychrome. In the Regulini-Galassi tomb at Cervetri (about 650 B.C.) large cauldrons of red glossy ware were found, with gryphons’ heads projecting all round, to which chains were attached. A similar cauldron from Falerii on a high open-work stand is now in the British Museum.
| Fig. 34.—Etruscan oinochoe, of black bucchero ware, with figures in relief. (British Museum.) |
We now come to the bucchero ware, which is characteristic of the later portion of this period, though the earliest examples go back to the end of the 7th century. Its main feature is the black paste of which it is composed, covered with a more or less shining black slip. Modern experiments seem to indicate that the clay was smoked or fumigated in a closed chamber after baking, becoming thereby blackened throughout, and the surface was then polished with wax and resin. Analyses of the ware have proved that it contains carbon and that it had been lightly fired. The oldest bucchero vases are small and hand-made, sometimes with incised geometrical patterns engraved with a sharp tool like metal-work. Oriental influence then appears in a series of chalice-shaped cups found at Cervetri with friezes of animals. From about 560 B.C. onwards the vases are all wheel-made, with ornaments in relief either stamped from a cylinder or composed of separate medallions attached to the vase. The subjects range from animals or monsters to winged deities or suppliants making offerings (fig. 34); in other cases we find meaningless groups of figures or plant forms. These types are found chiefly in southern Etruria, but at Chiusi (Clusium) a more elaborate variety found favour from about 500 to 300 B.C. The shapes are very varied and the ornament covers the vase from top to bottom, the covers of the vases being also frequently modelled in various forms. The figures are stamped from moulds, incised designs being added to fill up the spaces. The range of subjects is much widened, including scenes from Greek mythology and oriental types combining Egyptian and Assyrian motives, which must have been introduced by the Phoenicians.
Thus the technique of the bucchero wares is purely native, but the decoration is entirely dependent on foreign types whether Greek or oriental, and throughout the whole series the tendency to imitate metal-work is to be observed in every detail, both in the forms and in the methods of decoration. Some are mere counterparts of existing work in bronze.
The last variety of peculiarly Etruscan pottery which calls for notice is the Canopic jar, so called from its resemblance to the κάνωποι in which the Egyptians placed the bowels of their mummies. They are rude representations of the human figure, the head forming the cover, and in the tombs were placed on round chairs of wood, bronze or terra-cotta. An example of such a jar on a bronze-plated chair may be seen in the Etruscan Room of the British Museum (Plate III. fig. 65). Their origin has been traced to the funeral masks found in the earliest Etruscan tombs. From these a gradual transition may be observed from the mask (1) placed on the corpse, (2) on the cinerary urn, (3) the head modelled in the round and combined with the vase, and (4) at last the complete human figure. The earliest of these jars are found in the “pit-tombs” of the 8th century B.C., and the latest and most developed types belong to the 5th century B.C.
The skill shown by the Etruscans in metal-work and gem-engraving never extended to their pottery, which is always purely imitative, especially when they attempted painted vases after the Greek fashion. The kinds already described are all more or less plastic in character and imitative of metal, except in the case of the Cervetri and Polledrara finds, which have little in common with anything Greek, and exhibit a quite undeveloped art. But towards the end of the 6th century B.C., when Greek vases were coming into the country in large numbers, attempts were made to
