CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT

FOREIGN ARTISTS IN ETRURIA

Giovannangelo Camporeale

T

he natural materials and mineral resources of the region inhabited by the Etruscans

• agriculture, the forest, animal husbandry, fi shing, salt-pans, metal-bearing ores,
  quarries of valuable stone (see Chapter 1) – furnished products in substantial quantities
  that not only satisfi ed local demands, but also were extensively exported. The area affected
  by this development extends from the Mediterranean basin into transalpine Europe: in
  general, raw materials were shipped from Etruria and manufactured goods of refi ned
  artistic value arrived in return. In the same movement, merchants themselves also arrived,
  as well as commercial agents and, sometimes, master artists. In regard to the latter, the
  indications offered until now in the archaeological literature are either general comments
  or refer only to individual cases (Szilágyi 1972, pp. 70–71; Cristofani 1976; Torelli
  1976; Colonna 1980–1981 (1982); Canciani 1981; Martelli 1981; Maggiani, in Bocci –
  Maggiani 1985, pp. 51–54; Colonna, in Colonna – v. Hase 1986; Torelli 2000; Bellelli
  2004; Iaia 2005, pp. 234–236; Lulof 2005; Ridgway 2010, p. 52; Maggiani 2011). In
  this chapter I will seek to briefl y outline an overall picture, tracing the phenomenon
  from the earliest to the latest manifestations of Etruscan civilization. The starting point
  is not clear-cut: in Etruria, signatures of native artists are rare (on these, see Colonna
  1975; Pfi ffi g 1976; Cristofani 1988; Martelli 1989; Colonna 1993; Bruni 2005), and
  those of foreign artists working in Etruria are especially rare. Obviously, the signatures
  of artists on goods made abroad and imported into Etruria will not be taken into account
  here, though they are not infrequent (Phoenico-Cypriot bowls of the seventh century bc,
  Greek black- and red-fi gure vases). The theory has occasionally been advanced that Greek
  potters and painters could have produced in Etruria some of the vases found there and
  attributed to them, but this has often not been based on concrete evidence. The many
  suggestions offered in its wake, by a variety of scholars, are occasionally certain, at other
  times merely likely or simply hypothetical.
  From a tomb of the late ninth century bc at Tarquinia (Villanovan facies, phase IA–B)
  comes a bronze mirror originating in the Aegean-Cypriot region (Hencken 1968, p. 47,
  fi g. 35 b; Delpino 1998–1999; Delpino 2000); from a contemporary tomb at Vulci come
  three Sardinian bronzes: a statuette of a warrior-priest, a rattle in the form of a footstool,