- chapter 53: The meanings of bucchero –
popular. The name is accurate because this new style is indeed much heavier due to its
thick walls, larger scale, and more elaborate ornament. Simple, delicate motifs like the
open and closed fans, so common on bucchero sottile, are replaced with stamped or modeled
fi gures and designs in relief. In general, incision is used sparingly and often only to
accentuate or articulate a relief. The combination of wheel-made portions of a vase and
the hand-worked application of molded reliefs is typical. Scale is an important feature:
some vases in this technique are among the largest the Etruscans ever produced. They
rival the tallest Caeretan Red Ware pithoi.^30 These large vases are not utilitarian because
they are poorly fi red, quite friable and often intentionally perforated before fi ring. Many
seem to have been made expressly for funerary purposes, much like ceramica argentata,
a type of pottery associated with Volterra in the Etruscan Hellenistic period. Bucchero
pesante was primarily made at Vulci, Chiusi and Orvieto, centers of the most active new
ceramic workshops. Perhaps because it is considered less refi ned, repetitious and more
likely “mass-produced” than elegant bucchero sottile, bucchero pesante has not received the
attention it deserves in modern scholarship. It is an acquired taste.
There are many oddities about this kind of pottery. I would like to examine a few
representative bucchero pesante shapes. First, let us consider shapes that derive from familiar
prototypes. A large oinochoe in the Antikenmuseum Basel (Fig. 53.7) illustrates many
features of bucchero pesante. The shape (a variant of Rasmussen’s type 3e) is ultimately derived
from Protocorinthian oinochoai. Several elements retain the appearance of metal: the wide,
fl at handle; the clamp-like handle attachment decorated with four modeled human heads;
the thick horizontal bands at the base and foot; the repeated mold-made fi gures in relief
that ornament the belly. Above the larger frieze, which perhaps depicts Theseus fi ghting
the Minotaur, is a shoulder frieze composed of tear-drop-shaped gadroons, one of the most
common decorative motifs of bucchero pesante. The lower fi gural frieze shows a pair of young
men, perhaps boxers, confronting each other. This pair is repeated twelve times to form
the frieze but, of course, each pair derives from the same mold. Vases of this type are often
associated with workshops in Tarquinia.^31 The Basel oinochoe dates to circa 560–540 bc.
Figure 53.7 Bucchero pesante oinochoe, provenance unknown, circa 560–540 bc. (Antikenmuseum Basel,
inv. Zü 146 A–B.) Photograph: Courtesy of Antikenmuseum Basel.