chapter 54 : Etruscan terracotta figurinesThese provide only a small sample of the many varieties of this type: enthroned women
with or without child. Vagnetti’s category G 2 1 (See Fig. 54.7a) is typologically related
to G2oa (Fig. 54.7b), an enthroned figure without child, and to G2ob (Fig. 54.yd), an
enthroned woman holding both hands of a child on her lap, facing front. Throne type,
garments, especially the parallel diagonal folds over the legs, and features such as the
large head with emphasized bulging eyes, point to a common prototype. G28a (Fig.
54.7c) harks back to a different prototype, more closely related to Greek, Ionian types.
Her proportions are more slender, the head is smaller, features less exaggerated. G 27a
(Fig. 54.7e) is related to G28a in proportions, but her mantle covers most of her chest
including a small child whose tiny head projects above the mothers lap. A type close
to G 27a is also found in the Vignaccia deposit at Cerveteri (Fig. 54.8a).13 Again, the
ultimate prototype may have been a common type of Ionian Greek votive, reworked at
the least possible effort into a mother. The variations from Cerveteri illustrated in Fig.
54.8 represent two main iconographic types: the nursing, or cradling mother (Fig. 54.8,
a, c, d and f) and the mother displaying the infant (Fig. 54.8b and e), in the manner of the
Byzantine “Theotokos” (“God bearing”) Virgin.14 The distinction between the two must
have been significant for the Etruscans, as it was for the Byzantine Christians.
Figure 54.8 Six seated figures from the Vignaccia Sanctuary at Cerveteri. Inv. Nos. a) 8-2425;
b) 8-2426; c) 8-2427; d) 8-2543; e) 8-2433; f) 8-2548. Photo: author. Courtesy of the
Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley.a bcdef