reckoned in saecula. Helbig[1] showed that we cannot consider any of the traditional dates as being accurate until about 644 B.C., the beginning, that is, of the fifth saeculum. This is probably about one hundred years after the introduction of the Chalcidian (Ionic) alphabet into the country. One of the earliest examples of the use of it is on a vase found in the Regulini-Galassi tomb. In considering the trade of the country it has been pointed out that its chief political connexions were with Carthage, but the artistic sense of Carthaginians or other Phoenicians was not more developed than that of the Etruscans. They were traders, and doubtless brought the Etruscans some of the Egyptian and Eastern objects which have been found in their tombs, articles that date from the 7th and 6th centuries B.C. But beside the Phoenicians the Ionian Greeks from the 9th century had been trading and colonizing in Sicily and Italy. Herodotus (i. 163) tells how the Phocaeans were the first of the Greeks to take long voyages, and that they discovered the Adriatic and Tyrrhenian seas and Iberia. Thucydīdes (vi. 3. 1) says that it was Chalcidians from Euboea who first settled in Sicily. Pliny (Hist. Nat. xxxv. 12. 43) writes in the same sense, for he tells of Demaratus who came from Corinth with the artists Eucheir, Diopus, Eugrammus, about 650 B.C., and first started sculpture in Italy. These traditions of the coming of Ionian Greeks to Italy are completely borne out by the archaeological remains found in Ionian lands and in Etruria, and it is agreed that a great part of what has hitherto been considered Etruscan is no more Etruscan than the Moorish plates of the 15th century found in Italy are Florentine. The best works in most of the smaller arts are almost without exception Greek, the earlier Ionian, the later Attic; the remainder are made with the distinct intention of imitating Greek models, and so should be considered as Greek, inasmuch as they do not show a natural, original expression of feeling on the part of the Etruscan workman. The Etruscans were dull artists in all lines. They were skilful copyists, nothing more, as is absolutely proved by the simple fact that we know of no Etruscan artist by name. If one takes the articles which are of obviously local manufacture, such as the burial urns[2] or the ordinary bronze mirrors, or the pottery, it would be hard to find a similar quantity of work by any other race so lacking in originality of conception or high excellence of technique.
In the study of the monuments a division must be made distinguishing between the obviously Greek works, the works done with a desire to copy Greek models and the work of native artists. To separate the objects in the way suggested required a very considerable familiarity with Greek art, and though in many cases the result may be doubtful, still so much must be taken from the Etruscans that they are shown to have little more artistic feeling than the Romans. In the earlier centuries a strong eastern influence appears in the copying of sphinxes and similar eastern motives, but this soon gave way to the stronger Greek influence, as was natural, for the intercourse with the Phoenicians was spasmodic whereas that with the Greeks was constant. But even with the Greeks to kindle their imaginations, the Etruscans produced no school of art; no steady progression is traceable. In various towns there were various fashions of pottery or jewelry, but good, bad and indifferent constantly occur together in a way possible only among a people who possessed no natural artistic capacities and had no widespread standards of cultivated taste. The Ionians have been mentioned as having strongly affected the arts in Etruria, and, though in the later centuries Athens undoubtedly exported heavy consignments to Italy, the taste of the Etruscans seems generally to have preferred the rather heavy loose style of the Ionians, even when direct contact with them was lost and its place taken by direct relations with Athens and her colonies.
Pottery[3] practised enormously by the Etruscans shows as clearly as possible their essential strength and weakness as artists. Even the black ware called bucchero is now known to have been manufactured in other lands and not to be an exclusively Etruscan style. In the earlier tombs this Pottery. ware is present in greater numbers than any other, and the vases exhibit considerable dexterity of manufacture so far as form goes. But it is evident from comparisons with early Ionian vases that the better proportioned of the shapes are direct copies of the Ionian. The decoration of the bucchero is either engraved, in which case it is almost always extremely rude, or formed by figures modelled or pressed by a mould on to the body of the vase. In these two last cases the figures are often suggestive of the farther East (Egyptian and Mesopotamia), but still more frequently they are taken from Greek originals, and the natural tendency of the Etruscan artist to be a copyist is very marked. Whence the moulds for these vases came is not known, but analogy with other classes of work makes it practically certain that some were imported and some made by the imitating workmen. There are other classes of vases which at first sight look as though they were imported from Greece, but by the nature of their clay are recognized to be Etruscan imitations of Greek originals. The imitation is often very skilful, for the Etruscan artist rivalled his Grecian master in deftness of hand, if not in imagination. Such, for instance, are the large amphoras decorated with bands of animals in the Corinthian style. Besides these native Vases the tombs have yielded great quantities of others which used to be called Etruscan, but are now known to have been imported from Greece. Until the 6th century B.C. these vases are mostly Ionian, but at that time the trade of the Phocaeans was waning before that of Athens, and henceforward the Athenian ware is the commonest. Intercourse with Athens, however, came to an end about 480, when the Sicilian Greeks mastered the trade of the western Mediterranean, so that in the Etruscan tombs later than this date we find fewer and fewer imported vases, and more and more native imitations. It is generally taken for granted that these Attic vases were brought to Etruria by Greek traders, but considering how little the Greek historians, even Herodotus, knew of that country, this is unlikely. Then, too, the chief products Etruria had to give Greece were metals, so it is more likely that it was the Etruscan traders who, having carried metal to Greece (where Etruscan bronze was famous[4]), brought back the vases.
Though most collections make no distinction between Greek and Etruscan scarabs the differences, though slight, are quite certain, and consist in the greater elaboration of the borders, edges and backs of the Etruscan examples. The commonest material for these gems is red carnelian, and Scarabs. agate frequently occurs. The beetle shape is undoubtedly due to the Phoenicians, who familiarized the Etruscans with the Egyptian scarab and with its signification as an amulet; while in technique they are more Greek, in use they are more Egyptian, for they were used not only as seals but as ornaments—as in the decoration of necklaces.[5] What we learn from them merely serves to strengthen what we learn from the pottery—that the Etruscans depended on the Greek world for their artistic conceptions. Though many Phoenician gems (in fact, scarcely any other kind) have been found in Sardinia, these are comparatively rare in Etruria, where the earliest gems occur about 650 B.C. Some of these earliest show the Ionian influence, which is also shown in certain gold rings, but most of them represent the Attic style as seen on the black-figured vases of Athens. To understand them one has but to know Attic sculpture, the complete history of which is repeated in these small and beautifully worked stones. At first one finds the single figures, awkward in form and modelling, but full of life in composition—one finds the same mistakes in anatomy (i.e. the muscles of the stomach); and then come the figures beautifully worked and accurately observed, but with the slight hardness and rigidity that belongs to all pre-Raphaelite work; and finally one sees the figures carved with the easy assurance of the master,
- ↑ Annali dell’ Inst. Arch., 1876, 230.
- ↑ Gerhard, Etruskische Spiegel; Körte, Rilievi delle urne Etrusche.
- ↑ See Pottier, Catalogue des vases antiques, II. L’École Ionienne, Boehlau, Aus ionischen und italischen Nekropolen; Karo, De arte vascularia antiquissima; Endt, Ionische Vasenmalerei. See further Ceramics, § Etruscan.
- ↑ Athen. i. 28.
- ↑ Martha, L’Art étrusque, pl. I, 4; Bull. dell’ Inst. (1837) p. 46.
