| 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 imitate the black-figure style, especially of a particular class of Ionian vases. Imitations of these are to be found in most museums and may be readily recognized as Etruscan from peculiarities of style, drawing and subject, as well as their inferior technique (fig. 35).
| Fig. 35.—Etruscan Amphora imitating Greek style; parting scene of Alcestis and Admetus, with Etruscan inscriptions. |
At a later date (4th-3rd century b.c.) they began to copy red-figured vases with similarly unsuccessful results. With the exception of a small class of a somewhat ambitious character made at Falerii (Civita Castellana), of which there is a good example in the British Museum with the subject of the infant Heracles strangling the serpents, they are all marked by their inferior material and finish and their bizarre decoration. The style is often repulsive and disagreeable, as well as ineffective, and the grim Etruscan deities, such as Charun, are generally introduced. Some of these vases have painted inscriptions in the Etruscan alphabet. The latest specimens positively degenerate into barbarism.
Painted vases of native manufacture are also found in the extreme south of Italy and have been attributed to the indigenous races of the Peucetians and Messapians; their decoration is partly geometrical, partly in conventional plant forms, and is the result of natural development rather than of imitation of Greek types. Some of the shapes are characteristic, especially a large four-handled krater. They cover the period 600-450 b.c., after which they were ousted by the Graeco-Italian productions we have already described.
Roman Pottery.—Roman vases are far inferior to Greek; the shapes are less artistic, and the decoration, though sometimes not without merits of its own, owes most of its success to the imitation or adaptation of motives learnt from earlier Grecian, Egyptian or Syrian potters. They required only the skill of the potter for their completion, and, being made by processes largely mechanical, they are altogether on a lower scale of artistic production.
It has been noted that during a certain period—namely, the 3rd and 2nd centuries b.c.—ceramic art had reached the same stage of evolution all round the Mediterranean, painted pottery had been ousted by metal-work, and such vases as continued to be made were practically imitations of metal both in Greece and Italy. These latter we must regard as representing ordinary household pottery, or as supplying to those who could not afford to adorn their houses and temples with costly works in metal, a humble but fairly efficient substitute. There is a terra-cotta bowl of the 2nd century b.c. in the British Museum which is an exact replica of a chased silver bowl with reliefs in the same collection, and may serve as an illustration of this condition of things (Plate II. fig. 56).