Vatican Museums

This valuable service is assorted according to funerary ritual, and the workshop from which it was commissioned would have been made up of experts in toreutics of oriental origin, who somehow ended up working in the “multicultural” context of Cerveteri. The oinochoe (1) is linked to Phoenician trade and artisanship, as indicated by the distinctive characteristics of the shape, the use of gilding and the Paradise Flower motif on the plate of the handle. The hemispherical cup (5) and the patera with pod-shaped decorations (6) derive from ceremonial vases used in the oriental courts. The skyphos (3) instead recalls a type of late-geometric Corinthian ceramics, linked to the westward movements of the Greeks. The double-helix amphora (2) and the cup (4) present “local” shapes in precious materials. Some of these bear the Etruscan inscription larthia or mi larthia, “I belong to Larth”, in accordance with the archaic use of the “speaking” object. The inscriptions, engraved by the same craftsman, indicate a direct relationship between the production and the commission of the object in the local context.