The Etruscan World (Routledge Worlds)

• Maurizio Sannibale –

processions, and assemblies of gods, while on the roof above statues of seated ancestors
and real and imaginary animals look down.
Also in Murlo, a multipurpose workshop, consisting of a roof on pillars, saw production
processes presumably with exchanges of knowledge and workers: architectural tiles and
terracottas, working of metal, bone, horn and ivory. The production model is certainly
more akin to that of the Renaissance artist than the industrial revolution that would
otherwise have resulted in the segregation (conceptual and spatial) and specialization of
the various procedures.

THE ART

In Etruscan Orientalizing art there exists a certain duality of reference models: on one
hand the geometric tradition, and on the other fi gurative style and animal subjects that
bear the imprint of the East. The Euboean artisan-immigrants in Etruria in the eighth
century had established a geometric tradition refl ected in pottery decoration (Fig. 6.28)^44

Figure 6.27 Tomba a casa with portico. Tuscania, Pian di Mola. 575–550 bc. After A. M. Sgubini

Moretti, in Atti II Congresso Internazionale Etrusco, Roma 1989.

Figure 6.28 Krater of the “Bisenzio Group” decorated with geometric motifs and

metopes with stylized birds. Second half of eighth century bc. Museo Gregoriano

Etrusco 16321. Photo © Musei Vaticani.