Vatican Museums

Alongside the production of sarcophagi in stone materials, between the third and second centuries B.C. in southern inner Etruria there is evidence of characteristic production of sarcophagi in terracotta especially in Tuscania, the centre from which the funeral monument of the Dying Adonis also originates.
The lid is in the form of a kline, produced in two separate hollow parts, and depicts a woman reclining on her side in a banqueter’s pose; she wears a short-sleeved shirt, a girded tunic, a cape over her head and various pieces of jewellery: a diadem with set in stones, drop earrings, a flat strip necklace, rings, bracelets and an armilla. The casket of the sarcophagus is missing.
On an artistic level, the rendering of the body is formally of a lower standard, and is sculpted schematically and stereotypically; the signature motif of the almond shaped folds on the chest is notable. Greater care was given to the head. “Portraits” on sarcophagi tend in any case to follow fixed typologies, able to satisfy the most common requests. Female effigies, above all, tend to maintain rather impersonal features adhering to refined late-classical models.