Vatican Museums

The antefixes decorated the roofs of buildings, following the line of the eaves. Here a young woman is represented, winged and semi-nude, draped and with a cetra (harp) in her left hand, resting on a small pillar. She wears a diadem on her head, and her hair has undulating curls.
Similar antefixes with a winged but draped figure, playing the double flute or resting on a small pillar, have been found in Luni. The iconography recalls the personifications of Musa in the Etruscan context, documented by mirror engravings and votive statuettes with female figures, semi-draped and playing the cithara. More generally, it is comparable to the female figures recurrent in the reliefs of urns from Volterra, often characterised by a strong influence of statuary prototypes from Rhodes.