Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/235

III. Etruscan Sculpture. As we have seen in speaking of their architecture, the Etruscans were an Asiatic race who settled in Italy at a very early date, but never became assimilated with their neighbours. They excelled in all the mechanical arts — such as the chasing of gold and silver, the casting of bronze statues, the manufacture of armour, altars, tripods, etc., for which great industry and power of imitation alone were required ; but they were wanting in the imagination and force of character indispensable to the working out of a national style. The earliest Etruscan works of sculpture which have come down to us are the stone reliefs of tombstones (Fig. 86), in which the figures are treated in the realistic manner characteristic of Assyrian art. In many cases the upper part of the body is seen in full, whilst the head and legs are represented in profile. The low receding fore- heads, flat skulls, and projecting chins, are of an essentially Eastern type. In somewhat later works we see the same archaic style combined with greater animation and more lifelike expression. This is the case with a figure of a bearded warrior in low relief, from a tombstone, now in the Volterra Museum. The strange black vases of unburnt clay, found in the tombs at Chiusi (the Clusium of the Romans), must also be reckoned amongst the earliest Etruscan sculptures. The lids of many of them represent human heads of an Egyptian type, and some have grotesque figures on the sides and handles. The Campana collection, in the