THE SPHINX - THE ETRUSCAN VESSEL

Etruscan imagery was heavily influenced by tendencies from the Orient.

The Middle Eastern influence reappears throughout Etruscan art, from ceramics to sculpture and painting. The sphinx and other mythical creatures were popular motifs among the Etruscan aristocracy.

A storage vessel in the characteristic Etruscan black ware, bucchero, is ornamented in precisely this fashion, with elegant sphinxes in relief, incised birds and entwined flower palmettes. The motifs had a quite definite symbolic significance.

The detailed relief decoration which often appears on bucchero ware, was undoubtedly inspired by the finer vessels in bronze and silver gilt, which have been found in many locations in Etruria.