Vatican Museums

At the right end of the triangular pediment of a temple, against the background of the final slab covering the lateral beam of the tympanum, the animal emerges in clear relief, in the act of taking flight, with its front hooves worked in the round and silhouetted against the sky. A sober polychrome decoration, expertly alternated with unembellished areas, defines the details of the figure and qualifies the surface, decorated with scales. The horse would originally have been harnessed with a bit, possibly made of bronze.
The figure falls fully within the Greek iconographic tradition, which already in the Archaic period offered isolated horse heads as a single decorative element in Attic ceramics. For the naturalism and vigour of the sculpture, this Pegasus, influenced by the formal achievements of Greek art in the early fifth century B.C., is among the finest examples of surviving Etruscan coroplastic art, worthy of the good reputation it enjoyed in ancient Italy.