From Mus. di ant. class.
FIG. 181. CANOPIC JAR IN CHAIR PLATED WITH BRONZE.
The types are both male and female throughout, the latter being usually distinguished by wearing earrings and necklaces. Towards the end of the series the handles are gradually converted into rudimentary arms, and finally into fully developed human arms, sometimes holding attributes. They are probably placed on chairs as emblems of the power and authority which the deceased enjoyed during his life. In the Berlin Museum[[2314]] there is a remarkable example of the sixth century in which the jar is placed on a chair of the same clay, covered with graffito ornamental designs and figures of animals. The jars are always made of a plain red unglazed clay, and are uncoloured. In the British Museum[[2315]] there are two seated female figures on detached square bases, wearing bright red chitons and large circular earrings, which seem to represent the period of transition from the jar to the sarcophagus, the style in which they are modelled being that of the fifth century. Some of the later examples have strongly individualised features, and seem to be genuine portraits; it is possible that they are actually from moulds taken from the faces of the dead.
(5) PERIOD OF GREEK INFLUENCE; PAINTED POTTERY
Although the Etruscans executed such admirable works in bronze, exercised with such skill the art of engraving gems, and produced such refined specimens of filagree-work in gold, they never attained to high excellence in their pottery. The vases already described belong to plastic rather than pictorial art, and are mostly imitations of work in metal. Down to the end of the sixth century B.C. their attempts at painting vases have been, as we have seen, limited practically to two fabrics, the Polledrara ware and the Caere jars with paintings in a similar technique. These methods have, however, nothing in common with Greek vase-paintings of the ordinary kind on a glazed surface, a method which was never popularised in Etruria.
The total failure of the Etruscans in vase-painting finds a curious parallel in their sculpture; all their best work is to be sought in their engraving or figures in low relief, as in the mirrors and cistae. Yet the same mirrors and cistae show clearly that it was from no lack of ability in drawing that they failed; wherefore it is the less easy to understand, not only the absence of all originality in their painted vases, but also the rarity of instances of their imitative tendencies in this respect.
Apparently the red-figured vases which were imported into Etruria in such large numbers in the fifth century served as prototypes, not for their paintings, but for the engraved mirrors to which we have alluded. It may have been that they shrank from the task so successfully achieved by Greek painters of suitably decorating the curved surfaces of a vase, and preferred the flat even surfaces supplied by the circular mirrors and the sides of the cistae. Moreover, the interior designs of the kylikes, perfected by Epiktetos, Euphronios, and their contemporaries, served as obvious models for disposing a design in a circular space; and they had in the subjects of the vases a mythological repertory ready to hand.
It now remains to be seen to what extent they actually were influenced in their pottery by the imported Greek vases.
For considerably over a century painted pottery, at all times rare in Etruria, is practically unrepresented in the tombs except by Greek importations, Corinthian, Ionic, and Attic; the only local attempts in this direction are the Polledrara and Cervetri vases. As we have seen, early Corinthian vases appear in the fossa tombs, and later Corinthian in the chamber tombs, in which, towards the middle of the sixth century, the Attic B.F. fabrics begin to make their appearance. The latest developments of the Corinthian wares are, indeed, almost unrepresented, but their place is taken by what appear to be local imitations of the Corinthian vases, a large series of which was found at Cervetri, and now forms part of the Campana collection in the Louvre. These are, however, for the most part certainly Greek, being presumably made by the Greek settlers in that town—at any rate, an Etruscan origin cannot be proved for them.[[2316]]
We have also seen that the Ionian fabrics exercised a great influence on Etruscan art, and this leads us to another series of vases found at Cervetri, the Caeretan hydriae discussed in Chapter [VIII]. Some years ago it was noticed by the late F. Dümmler[[2317]] that there were in many museums examples of a class of vases which stood in close relation to the Caeretan hydriae, yet were obviously a different fabric. Having collected and examined these vases, he was able to demonstrate satisfactorily that they were direct imitations by the Etruscans of the Caeretan hydriae,[[2318]] thereby proving at the same time that the latter were imported from other sources (sc. Ionia), and not, as had hitherto been supposed, themselves of Italian origin. It is not unlikely that the Ionic influence in Etruria is due to the Phocaean migration of 544 B.C.; on reaching Italy the Ionian fugitives would naturally hand on their art-traditions there.