Hostname: page-component-7b7567c8c-tnzcf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-12T06:56:55.074Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Polledrara Ware

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Cecil Smith
Get accessRights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The contents of the famous ‘Grotta of Isis’ discovered on the Polle-drara estates at Vulci in 1839 have been generally known to archaeologists ever since the publication in 1844 of Micali's Monumenti Inediti, where a selection of them is given on Pll. iv.—viii., pp. 37—71. The quality however of the drawings there given is very far from answering the present requirements of study: and an adequate publication of these important remains has long been badly wanted. In the course of last year Professor Victor Horsley had a series of elaborate drawings made of some of the principal objects in the tomb, as a present to Professor Montelius. As the latter did not intend to publish the drawings in their elaborate form, Professor Horsley most kindly arranged with Mr. Murray that some of the more important should be presented to the Hellenic Society; it is thus owing to him that the Society is enabled to put this valuable series of drawings within the reach of scholars.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 14 , November 1894, pp. 206 - 223
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1894

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

1 The name Polledrara has been loosely applied to this particular tomb, but is misleading, inasmuch as several other important tombs have been found in the same locality (see the map in Gsell, Fouilles de Vulci). The term however will perhaps serve as well as any other to distinguish the peculiar fabric which is the subject of this paper; it goes without saying that its usage does not commit one to a theory of origin any more than the similar usage of the terms ‘Mycenaean,’ ‘Melian’ or ‘Fikellura’ as applied to special fabrics.

2 See Gsell, loc. cit. p. 445, note.

3 See Brit. Mus. A 414: Berlin Cat. 1047.

4 The broad mass on each side of the muzzle is not a ‘Kopftuch’ as Jahn, (Arch. Beitr. p. 264Google Scholar, note 25) supposed, nor yet a mane as Wulff, (Zur Theseussage, p. 4Google Scholar) suggests: it is not easy to understand how a bull can have a mane. It is merely the full-face drawing of the bull's neck, which, in the usual archaic method,. has been reproduced on each side, just as the plume is repeated on each side of the helmeted head in full face (see Murray, in J.H.S. vol. ii. p. 318Google Scholar).

5 Furtwängler, in Arch. Zeit. 1884, p. 107Google Scholar.

6 Ibid. Pl 8, Figs. 3 and 4.

7 Wulff, , Zur Theseussage, p. 2Google Scholar.

8 This peculiarity, a kind of mane between the loins and tail, recurs on the Veii wall-painting, Micali, Mon. Ined. Pl. 58, Fig. 1, and on the bronze relief from Perugia, Micali, Storia, Pl. 28, Fig. 3: cf. Dümmler, in Röm. Mitth. 1888, p. 162Google Scholar.

9 These caps are probably the Etruscan ‘tutulus’: the petasos which Furtwängler describes may be that which occurs on the terracotta slab from Caere, J.H.S. vol. x. Pl. vii.

10 In an adjoining tomb at Caere, ransacked in antiquity, there was found a sarcophagus like the celebrated Campana one in the British Museum, and with it the fragments of various Corinthian vases (Helbig, ibid. p. 168).

11 Zur Theseussage, p. 4 &c.

12 Röm. Mitth. 1888, p. 159 foll.

13 Loc. cit. p. 448.

14 The stalks of the lotus in more than one case are drawn as if joined below and at the flower and bulging outwards between: an obviously Egyptian motive, which reappears also in the bone spoon found in the Grotta of Isis.

15 Furtwängler, , Der Goldfund von Vettersfelde, Pl. iii. 1Google Scholar.

16 Wulff (loc. cit.) remarks that the lions in the Vettersfelde friezes are drawn like those of our hydria, with the muzzle indicated by a series of concentric curved lines.

17 Murray, , Handbook of Archaeology, p. 56Google Scholar: part of an ostrich egg decorated in the same methods was found at Naukratis, see Petrie, Naukcratis, i. Pl. xx., Fig. 15.

18 Micali, Storia, Pl. xx. Figs. 1 and 13.

19 Murray, in J.H.S. vol. x. p. 243Google Scholar.

20 The dotted line also occurs on the handles of the hydria and on the Caere slabs (J.H.S. vol. x. p. 250).

21 The fragments alluded to by Mr.Gardner, E. in Naukratis ii. p. 47Google Scholar, type J, have of course no real resemblance to Polledrara ware: their designs are painted in white and red on a glaze which is characteristic of Naukratis pottery: they belong more properly to the class described by Six, in Gazette Arch. 1888, p. 193Google Scholar and p. 281.

22 Naukratis i. p. 49.

23 The waistband is decorated with a simple maeander pattern slightly repoussé, in a field which is filled with diagonal notched lines.