#krater

Object 15: Column-Krater from Tomb of Calsna (Kelebai)

Themes:

Funerary vase-painting, regional artistic style, portraiture vs. genericism, Hellenistic influence

Visual Description

Column-kraters (kelebai) made in Volterra used as ash urns. Distinguished by large-scale male and female heads in profile or three-quarter view, sketched rapidly in brush strokes on the belly or neck of the vase. The heads are vigorously painted with hatched shading that reflects Early Hellenistic pictorial techniques. Though tomb contexts suggest the heads 'stand for' the deceased, their generic quality and similarity to contemporary votive terracotta heads argue against reading them as true portraits. Tomb contexts indicate these vessels were manufactured between the last decade of the 4th and middle of the 3rd century BCE and distributed beyond Volterra into Northern Etruria.

Significance

The kelebai illustrate the tension in Etruscan funerary art between the desire to individualize the dead and the conventions of generic artistic types. The fluid, Hellenistic-influenced brushwork shows how northern Etruscan artists absorbed and adapted new pictorial techniques arriving from the Hellenistic Greek world. As ash urns, these vases belong to a specifically northern Etruscan tradition of cremation (compare Chiusi's Canopic urns) that persisted even as inhumation sarcophagi flourished in the south — revealing continued regional diversity within Etruria.

Broader Themes & Connections

Regional variation in funerary practice (Northern vs. Southern Etruria); Hellenistic pictorial influence on Etruscan painting; the tension between individual portraiture and generic type; the ash urn as a vehicle for the image of the dead; distribution and trade of funerary goods within Etruria.

Key Terms