The oldest examples, more distinctly indigenous than any of the succeeding styles, are of a brownish color and rude shape, and are decorated with bands and knobs or studs in relief. One peculiar shape bears a resemblance to a miniature rustic cottage, and belongs to the sepulchral class. Others, which are painted, recall the art of Greece in its first devotion to Phoenician or Egyptian models. They may, therefore, be referred to the age when the Tyrrheno-Pelasgians still held their settlements in Etruria, and are probably the work of these settlers and of the aboriginal inhabitants who preceded them. When the Etruscans overran the settlements of the Pelasgi, a red and black ware was introduced, and soon afterward we are brought more directly into contact with Grecian art by importations.
[Illustration: Fig. 197.--Ancient Etruscan Vase. Height, 21 in. (J.J. Dixwell Coll., Boston Museum of Fine Arts.)]
The best Etruscan works are of black paste (Fig. 197), toward which the brown changed as it improved. The ornaments are incised flowers, and bas-reliefs of animals and human faces, executed, designed, and arranged in styles decidedly Oriental. On one found at Vulci are monsters like the Egyptian sphinx, winged and woman-headed. It is probable that, of the two styles of ornamentation, the incised is the more ancient, and that the black ware, as a whole, belongs to between the seventh and third centuries before Christ. The prevalence of Egyptian forms and symbols in connection with this class, such as the scarabæus and ostrich eggs painted with strange winged monsters, gives additional probability to our estimate of their age, and shows how far Etruria availed herself of the act of Psammetichus I. of Egypt, who, B.C. 654, threw open the ports of that country to foreign traders. Contemporaneous with these are large vases of red ware corresponding with the Greek _pithoi_. The decoration displays a knowledge of the art of Egypt and the East, mingled with examples of that of Greece. The yellow ware is allied to the Doric; and specimens of a still paler color, ornamented with Grecian subjects, modified and adapted to Etruscan ideas, mark the close of the art. It at no time attained to any very great excellence, and declined early. Both of these facts are easily explained. In the wonderful collection of Signor Alesandro Castellani are many beautiful specimens of Etruscan bronze, carved gems, and work in gold. These are ascribed to the third, fourth, and fifth centuries before the Christian era; and it is only natural to suppose that the delicate skill acquired in the manipulation of such materials should have given rise to a distaste for the humbler though more obedient clay. Many of the vases suggest the transition from pottery to bronze in the evidence which their decoration gives of having been imitated from metal.