In the study of the monuments a division must be made distinguishing between the obviously Greek works, the works done with a desire to copy Greek models and the work of native artists. To separate the objects in the way suggested required a very considerable familiarity with Greek art, and though in many cases the result may be doubtful, still so much must be taken from the Etruscans that they are shown to have little more artistic feeling than the Romans. In the earlier centuries a strong eastern influence appears in the copying of sphinxes and similar eastern motives, but this soon gave way to the stronger Greek influence, as was natural, for the intercourse with the Phoenicians was spasmodic whereas that with the Greeks was constant. But even with the Greeks to kindle their imaginations, the Etruscans produced no school of art; no steady progression is traceable. In various towns there were various fashions of pottery or jewelry, but good, bad and indifferent constantly occur together in a way possible only among a people who possessed no natural artistic capacities and had no widespread standards of cultivated taste. The Ionians have been mentioned as having strongly affected the arts in Etruria, and, though in the later centuries Athens undoubtedly exported heavy consignments to Italy, the taste of the Etruscans seems generally to have preferred the rather heavy loose style of the Ionians, even when direct contact with them was lost and its place taken by direct relations with Athens and her colonies.
Pottery[28] practised enormously by the Etruscans shows as clearly as possible their essential strength and weakness as artists. Even the black ware called _bucchero_ is now known to have been manufactured in other lands and not to be an exclusively Etruscan style. In the earlier tombs this ware is present in greater numbers than any other, and the vases exhibit considerable dexterity of manufacture so far as form goes. But it is evident from comparisons with early Ionian vases that the better proportioned of the shapes are direct copies of the Ionian. The decoration of the _bucchero_ is either engraved, in which case it is almost always extremely rude, or formed by figures modelled or pressed by a mould on to the body of the vase. In these two last cases the figures are often suggestive of the farther East (Egyptian and Mesopotamia), but still more frequently they are taken from Greek originals, and the natural tendency of the Etruscan artist to be a copyist is very marked. Whence the moulds for these vases came is not known, but analogy with other classes of work makes it practically certain that some were imported and some made by the imitating workmen. There are other classes of vases which at first sight look as though they were imported from Greece, but by the nature of their clay are recognized to be Etruscan imitations of Greek originals. The imitation is often very skilful, for the Etruscan artist rivalled his Grecian master in deftness of hand, if not in imagination. Such, for instance, are the large amphoras decorated with bands of animals in the Corinthian style. Besides these native Vases the tombs have yielded great quantities of others which used to be called Etruscan, but are now known to have been imported from Greece. Until the 6th century B.C. these vases are mostly Ionian, but at that time the trade of the Phocaeans was waning before that of Athens, and henceforward the Athenian ware is the commonest. Intercourse with Athens, however, came to an end about 480, when the Sicilian Greeks mastered the trade of the western Mediterranean, so that in the Etruscan tombs later than this date we find fewer and fewer imported vases, and more and more native imitations. It is generally taken for granted that these Attic vases were brought to Etruria by Greek traders, but considering how little the Greek historians, even Herodotus, knew of that country, this is unlikely. Then, too, the chief products Etruria had to give Greece were metals, so it is more likely that it was the Etruscan traders who, having carried metal to Greece (where Etruscan bronze was famous[29]), brought back the vases.