call the Alexandrian age.

CHAPTER III.

ANCIENT ITALIAN SCULPTURE.

Ancient Italian sculpture was essentially Greek in its spirit, and
originated with the Etruscans, a very ancient people in Italy. There are
traces of an Oriental influence in the art of Etruria--a suggestion of
the sculpture of Egypt and Assyria, just as there is in Greek archaic
art; but the real feeling and spirit of it is Greek, and must have been
borrowed from Greece in some way.

The different theories and opinions about the Etruscans and their origin
do not concern us here; we have to do only with their sculpture as it is
seen in the remnants of it now in existence. In the beginning the
Etruscans made their statues of clay; marble was very rarely used. Later
on they learned the art of working in bronze, and carried it to great
perfection. Their bronze works were so numerous that in B.C. 295 Fulvius
Flaccus is said to have carried away two thousand statues from Volsinii
alone. Some of their figures were colossal, but the greater number were
statuettes.

There are some Etruscan bronzes remaining in the museums of Europe. The
Etruscans always were copyists rather than original artists; but they
copied such excellent things, and did it so well, that their productions
are by no means to be despised, and the skill which they acquired caused
their bronze and metal work to be highly valued, even in Athens itself.

The Etruscans were physically a more luxurious people than the Greeks,
as may be seen in the pictures of them which still remain in the tombs
of Corneto and other places. They gave much attention to luxury of
living, and the richly decorated goblets and other articles of table
furniture which they made may be seen in the Vatican and British Museum,
while the delicate and artistic gold work of their personal ornaments is
still much admired and copied diligently.

The Romans as a people were patrons of art rather than artists. They
seem from very early days to have admired the plastic art of other
nations; but of Romans themselves there were very few sculptors; their
artists were architects of grand structures rather than workers in the
lesser monuments of artistic skill and genius. At first, as we have
said, they relied upon the Etruscans, who built their earliest temples
and adorned them with sculptures, and the first record which we have of
Greek artists working in Rome gives us the names of Damophilus and
Gorgasus, who decora