One of the earliest instances, and perhaps the most remarkable, of Etruscan clay modelling in the round, for its size and execution, is the group on the top of the famous sarcophagus in the British Museum (Fig. [183]).[[2362]] The figures, a man and woman reclining on a couch, are life-size, of somewhat slender proportions, with smiling features, the drapery of the woman stiff and formal. Sir Charles Newton has described the style as “archaic, the treatment throughout very naturalistic, in which a curious striving after truth in anatomical details gives animation to the group, in spite of the extreme ungainliness of form and ungraceful composition.” The same difficulties that beset the sculptor of the Polledrara bust, in working in the round instead of relief, are visible here; and the contrast with the Hellenic style of the reliefs round the lower part is very marked. There are similar sarcophagi in the Louvre, and in the Museo Papa Giulio at Rome.[[2363]] M. Martha notes in regard to the figures on the former that the faces are remarkable for individuality and precision of type, but the limbs are stiff and rude. This is not an infrequent feature of early Greek art.[[2364]] Signor Savignoni claims these three monuments as purely Ionic Greek work, but repudiates much of the British Museum sarcophagus as un-antique.
FIG. 183. ARCHAIC TERRACOTTA SARCOPHAGUS (BRITISH MUSEUM).
Of later sculpture in terracotta the instances are comparatively few, by far the best being the pedimental sculptures from Luni in Northern Tuscany, discovered in 1842, and now at Florence.[[2365]] Their date is about 200 B.C., and they include figures of the Olympian deities, Muses, and a group of Apollo and Artemis slaying the Niobides. A few remains of similar figures were found at Orvieto.[[2366]]
FIG. 184. PAINTED TERRACOTTA SLAB FROM TOMB
(LOUVRE).
It may be convenient to speak here of a small group of monuments in terracotta which illustrate in an interesting manner the achievements of Etruscan painting in the archaic period. This is a series of terracotta slabs, which were inserted into the walls of small tombs at Cervetri to receive the painted decoration which the Etruscans considered such an important feature of their sepulchral arrangements.[[2367]] Two sets have been found, one of which is in the Louvre, the other in the British Museum; both are of similar character, and belong to the beginning of the sixth century, but the style varies in some degree. Fig. [184] gives one of the slabs in the Louvre.
The surface of the slabs was covered with the usual white slip or λεύκωμα of early Greek paintings,[[2368]] on which the designs were sketched with a point and filled in with red and black outlines or washes. The white ground was left for the flesh of women and for white drapery, the flesh of the men being coloured red. Of the two the Louvre slabs seem the more advanced, and more directly under Ionic influence, while the others are more provincial in character. The Caeretan hydriae seem to have left some traces on the former, and in the latter it is interesting to note the use of borders of white dots for the drapery, such as we see on the Daphnae vases (Vol. I. p. [352]).
These paintings may also be compared with those in the Grotta Campana at Veii (Vol. I. p. [39]), which, in spirit at any rate, if not in date, are the oldest examples of Etruscan painting, while still under Oriental influence. But not being works in terracotta, they do not strictly concern us here.