- chapter 48: Foreign artists in Etruria –
Figure 48.4 The “Cannicella Venus,” limestone statue, Orvieto, Cannicella necropolis. Museo Faina,
Orvieto © 2012. Photo Scala, Florence.To the fi rst years of the fi fth century bc is attributed a reference of Varro (ap. Pliny, Nat.
Hist. 35.45.154), in which he states that in Rome the ornamentation of temples was
Etruscan (tuscanica) prior to the arrival of Damophilos and Gorgasos, masters coming
from a region of Greek culture – Greece or more likely Magna Graecia or Sicily – who
would have worked on the pictorial and coroplastic decoration of the Temple of Ceres,
Liber and Libera, inaugurated in 493 bc (Colonna 1980–1981 [1982], pp. 170–172). It
is true that this is the case for Rome, but Latium Vetus and Etruria during the Archaic
period shared the same cultural and visual-artistic trend (Ridgway 2010, pp. 48–49).
The reference confi rms deductions made from archaeological evidence on the presence of
East Greek coroplasts at Caere in the preceding decades. In other words, the migration of
artists and the trade of artifacts toward Italy continues.
Between the second half of the sixth and the fi rst decades of the fi fth century bc, Attic
vase workshops were producing in large part for the Etruscan market: the masterpieces
of Attic pottery in Black and Red Figure are arriving there. Production included vases
destined for the symposium (kraters, amphorae, oinochoai, jugs, cups, stamnoi), many
especially produced by the Attic workshop of Nikosthenes (third to fourth quarter of
the sixth century bc), which combine shapes of Etruscan origin with painted Greek
decoration: amphorae, semi-cylindrical stands, kantharoi, skyphoi, stamnoi (the issue
has been raised by various scholars: Martelli 1985, p. 180; for amphorae: Hirschland
Ramage 1970, p. 22; Verzár 1973, pp. 51–52; Rasmussen 1979, pp. 74–75, type 1g;
Gran Aymerich 1982, p. 39; Rasmussen 1985, pp. 34–35; for semi-cylindrical stands:
von Bothmer 1972; Paribeni 1974, p. 132; for kantharoi, kyathoi, stamnoi: Isler Kerényi
1976; Rasmussen 1985; Brijder 1988; Ortenzi 2006; Giuman, Pilo 2012). Certainly, at
least one master also arrived, originally perhaps from Sicily or Rhegion and active at Vulci
in the second quarter of the fi fth century bc, he signed an amphora (now in the Cabinet
des Médailles, Paris) painted with scenes from the life of Achilles, in a technique of Red
fi gure but in superposed color; this is the Praxias-Group, if the two inscribed names, on