Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/666

Rh 642 T K U K I A round the lip. Subjects of this kind (see Plate VIII.) abound in early Etruscan art, and, so that there may be no doubt as to whence they were derived, on the early Greek vases found in Etruria. The date of this Greek pottery would then determine that of the Etruscan, and by means of the inscriptions not seldom occurring on the former, we arrive at a period not much if at all before 600 B.C., a result which again brings us to what has already appeared to have been the first great period of contact between the Etruscans and Greeks. It is to be observed also that the earlier system of vase decoration in Greece, by means of geometric patterns, is not found in Etruscan ware. Further, on the black vases in question are to be seen often figures modelled in the round which could not have been derived from Greece before 600 B.C., since it was not till then that sculpture in the round was fairly introduced there, and could not well have been derived from Assyria, since that country appears to have never developed this branch of art, while as regards Egypt it may be answered that the figures are in no way of an Egyptian type. This black ware seems to have been chiefly a local fabric of Clusium. Still at one time it may have been general in Etruria and also in Latium, which as at Albano has yielded from under the lava a series of very ancient vases of this same texture, but without the characteristic ornamentation, which, as has been said, limits the Etruscan pottery to a period not earlier than 600 B.C., aud possibly in some cases to at least a century later than this. Jewel. Jewellery. Their tombs have preserved ample evidence ler y- of the passion of the Etruscans for rich dresses and personal ornaments, the former surviving in the wall-paintings, the latter in actual specimens of goldsmith s work, consisting of necklaces, ear-rings, wreaths, bracelets, finger-rings, and fibulae for fastening the dress. From a comparison of any large collection of these ornaments, such as that of the British Museum or of the Vatican Museum, with the same class of objects from Greece, it will be observed as a rule that where a pattern of any kind has to be produced, the Greek accomplished it skilfully and rapidly by means of fine gold wire soldered down into the required design, that is, by filigree, as it is called ; while the Etruscan preferred to give it by sometimes innumerable and almost imperceptibly minute globules of gold, each separately made, and all soldered down in the necessary order that is to say, by granulated work. But these characteristics, essentially cor rect as they are, do not hold in all cases, since, on the one hand, there are numbers of Etruscan specimens where the granulated work is not employed, though it would be difficult to point to any one where the true filigree system takes its place, and since, on the other hand, granulated work is found on the early Greek ornaments from Camirus in Rhodes, now in the British Museum (for a specimen of these ornaments, see the article ARCHAEOLOGY, vol. ii. p. 350). The latter circumstance, exceptional though it is at present, may still serve to show how it may have been through the Greeks that this process of working in gold reached Etruria, in which case it must have happened at a period scarcely later than 600 B.C., the Camirus figures corresponding very markedly with the descriptions of certain figures on the chest of Cypselus. No doubt this process of working may equally well have been obtained through the Phoenicians^ if we may judge by the specimens from their settlements in Sardinia, and to some degree in Cyprus, and on the whole it is likely that in this matter of personal ornament the Etruscans were more in sympathy with the Phoenicians and orientals than with the Greeks. The bracelets, armlets, necklaces, and finger-rings worn by men on the Assyrian sculptures were precisely such as appealed to Etruscan tastes, and were not well to be had through .tiis medium of the Greeks, unless perhaps the Greeks of Cyprus, who worked side by side with the Phoenicians. The three gold necklaces engraved by Cesnola (Cyprus, pi. 22-24) might have been obtained from Etruscan tombs, instead of from a treasure chamber in Cyprus, so far as the workmanship is concerned. In any case the original in vention of so toilsome a process as that of the granulated work, while it cannot fairly be ascribed to the Greeks, may well have been due to the Phoenicians, whose greatest fame in very early times was for their skill in metal work, and whose products of this nature for example, the silver patera? of the Reguluii-Galassi tomb at Caere have been traced to Etruria as well as to Latium (Prseneste) and the coast of Italy (Salerno). From the fact that with the loss of their national independence there came rather an increase than otherwise of private wealth among the Etruscans, and a consequent continuation of the demand for jewellery, it happens that there is among their remains material for the study of this branch of their art or industry in its latest as well as its earliest stages. In the earliest specimens there is a preference for figures of animals in rows, as on the early vases, followed by winged figures of deities, the artistic ele ment of form being always very rude and mechanical. In later times the human form is introduced faithfully, true to the Greek type, and representing personages from Greek legend or mythology. Gold was the favourite material, and with it were employed amber, glass, precious stones, occasionally enamel, and seldom silver. The precious stones most in use, either for finger-rings or for necklaces, were the carnelian and agate, cut either as scarabs or as beads. Glass was made into beads. Amber served a variety of purposes, as beads, ornaments of fibulas, where it is employed with gold, and amulets, of which one specimen in the British Museum is in the form of an ape of a species peculiar to India (Macacus rhesus), whence the knowledge of it has been supposed to have been conveyed by the ships of Tarshish which brought apes and peacocks from that quarter. Ths amber itself was obtained first of all from about the mouth of the Po, and afterwards from the Baltic as now; but whether, as has been lately maintained (Helbig, Real Accademia del Lincei, Rome, 1876-7), the artistic remains in this material can be all grouped into one of two classes, representing a very early and a very late period with no intermediary stage, is a ques tion on which perhaps more remains to be said before it is finally settled. Bronzes. Among the articles still pertaining to personal Bn use is the series of bronze mirrors the extent of which may be conceived from the fact that a considerable number have been found since the publication of Gerhard s work (Etruskische Spicyel, 1843-1867), with 430 plates, many of which give from four to six examples. These mirrors are polished on one side, and on the other have a design engraved on the bronze, taken in the majority of cases from Greek legend or mythology, and no less from an artistic point of view founded on Greek models (see fig. 3). But while- this is obvious enough, it is remarkable that as yet probably not more than six engraved mirrors have been discovered in Greece itself, and except in one case even these cannot be said to bear any analogy of design to the Etruscan mirrors. Perhaps it deserves to be considered that these few speci mens come from Corinth, whence, as tradition said, Greek art was introduced into Etruria. But it is not enough to sup pose the first impulse towards work of this kind to have come from Greece. It is necessary to find, if not mirrors, some other classes of objects which could have supplied the Etruscans with the multitude of entirely Greek designs which they have reproduced. No doubt the painted vases were largely drawn up, especially the shallow paterae, with designs on a circular space in the centre, as may be seen, for example, in the three mirrors in Gerhard (pi. 159, 160), where the group of Peleus carrying off Thetis, familiar on