Why is bucchero black?
Ordinary clay turns red in the kiln because of the iron oxide it contains, which is why a flowerpot is red. Etruscan potters changed the air inside the kiln: they fired their pots in an atmosphere full of carbon monoxide instead of oxygen, a reducing firing, and the iron changed colour, turning the clay grey or black right through. The same clay that would come out red in an open kiln came out black in a closed one. Polishing gave the surface its shine.
Why go to the trouble? Look at the shapes. Many bucchero vessels copy metal ones, with sharp edges, thin walls and handles shaped like those of bronze cups, and a polished black cup could recall a metal one. It was the most successful Etruscan pottery style, common across pre-Roman Italy for about two centuries.
Thin first, then heavy
Specialists divide bucchero into two families. The finest is bucchero sottile (Italian for “thin”), light and thin-walled, made in the seventh and early sixth centuries BCE. In the Orientalizing phase its shapes and motifs came mostly from metalwork imported from Phoenicia and Cyprus, and the decoration, incised or in relief, stayed modest so that the form came first.
In the sixth century Greek influence took over. Bucchero potters made Greek shapes such as amphoras, kraters and cups, decorated them with birds and animals, and sometimes ran a band of figures round the vessel by rolling a carved cylinder over the soft clay, like a pastry roller printing a pattern. Some even painted figures on the black surface or copied Greek black-figure painting. From the middle of the century quality declined, and the thin ware gave way to bucchero pesante (“heavy”), thick-walled, elaborate and loaded with reliefs.
Greek vases in Etruscan tombs
The Etruscans prized finely painted Greek vases and collected them in large numbers, and their tombs kept them. At Vulci alone the tombs yielded so much that a large part of its pottery is now in the Louvre, in Munich and in the British Museum. The exchange went both ways: Greek potters, and their works, influenced the Etruscan painted wares made in the same centuries.
Made in Athens for Etruria
One Athenian workshop shows how much Etruscan taste mattered. Nikosthenes, the owner of a potter’s establishment in the late sixth century BCE, exported actively to Etruria, signed his wares often and specialised in Athenian versions of Etruscan shapes that appealed to his customers in the west. A type of amphora is named after him, the Nicosthenic amphora, with flat ribbon handles fixed to the top of the lip and to the shoulder, an egg-shaped body and a narrow neck. In other words, an Etruscan shape came back to Etruria painted in Athenian black-figure.
Seen this way, Etruscan pottery is a whole table: local bucchero, imported Greek vases, and Athenian products shaped to Etruscan taste. Put that table next to the rest of Etruscan art, and the same pattern appears, local materials and Greek models.
Where to see it
At the Metropolitan Museum in New York the bucchero kantharos is in gallery 170 and the Nicosthenic amphora in gallery 171. Many vases from the tombs of Vulci are in the Louvre in Paris, in Munich and in the British Museum in London.
Sources
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Bucchero ware”, “Vulci”.
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Heilbrunn Timeline: C. and S. Hemingway, “Etruscan Art” (2004); records 21.88.146 and 56.171.24.
