Chapter III

. when dealing with the Greek terracottas. Large figures

were made from models (_proplasmata_) and built up in several pieces on a wooden framework, known as _crux_ or _stipes_.[2651] A reference to this method may be traced in a fable of Phaedrus,[2652] which describes Prometheus as having made human figures in clay in separate pieces, and, on returning from a supper with Bacchus, joined them together wrongly, so that the sexes became confused. The smaller figures were all made from moulds, by means of which they could be repeated with but slight alterations. Few statuettes seem to have been made after the second century of the Empire.

* * * * *

The range of subjects in Roman terracottas is much the same as in the Greek figures of the Hellenistic period. At Pompeii _genre_ figures predominate, including such types as gladiators, athletes in the circus, slaves carrying bundles, and personages in Roman costume.[2653] A favourite type at Pompeii is a mask of a youth in a Phrygian cap.[2654] There is a decided preference shown for portraits and grotesques. Von Rohden,[2655] in dealing with the question of the extent to which these figures represent Greek or purely Roman types, considers that although the influence of the former is still strong, yet they are marked by such wide differences that they must be ranked in the latter category. He dates them in the time of Vespasian, in which the decadence which had begun with the later Hellenistic age is in the Roman fabrics still more strongly accentuated. The style is negligent, the proportions faulty, and the art of colouring practically lost. They are only redeemed from insignificance by the taste for portraiture and the interest which attaches to the reproduction of motives borrowed from contemporary life.

The Pompeii figures may serve as typical Roman terracottas, but they are also found elsewhere in Italy, as well as in other parts of the Roman Empire; nearly all, however, are of inferior merit and execution. At Praeneste in 1878, on the site of the temple of Fortuna Primigenia, were found _genre_ figures and votive objects,[2656] and similar _ex votos_ have come to light at Gabii.[2657] At Nemi figures have been found which are obviously of Roman date, some of considerable size.[2658] From time to time finds have been made in Rome, and there is a pretty little head in the British Museum found in the Tiber (D 383), which, however, may be of Greek workmanship. The industry also extended from Rome to the provinces, and even in Britain terracotta figures are sometimes found, as at Richborough[2659]; at Caistor, by Norwich, a terracotta head of Diana, of fairly good style, is recorded.[2660] There are also in the Guildhall Museum some terracottas in the coarse red clay which characterises most of the British examples: a Venus on a swan; a female head with turreted crown, of archaistic style, from Finsbury; and a large figure of Proserpina holding a fruit, of very fair style, from Liverpool Street.[2661] A figure of a boy on horseback is or was in the Museum of Practical Geology.[2662]

2. GAULISH TERRACOTTAS

In Gaul there appear to have been very extensive manufactures of terracottas, but not anterior to the conquest by Julius Caesar in 58 B.C. These statuettes were made for the Roman colonists, who introduced the types of their own religious conceptions, but the makers were local craftsmen. Potteries have been unearthed at Moulins on the banks of the Allier, and in Auvergne and other parts of France, and even in Germany, where one was discovered at Heiligenberg in Alsace, and others on the Rhine (see below, p. 384). The finds on the Allier, made in 1857, give a practically complete survey of the subjects; they are all now collected in the museums of Moulins and St. Germain, and were fully published at the time in a work by M. Tudot.[2663] The figures found here are not from tombs, but were unearthed from the sites of the potteries and from ruins of buildings; they are all made in a peculiar white clay, whereas the figures of the Gironde district are grey or black, and those of the Rhine Valley reddish, like those of Britain. The technique resembles that of the Roman figures; there is no vent-hole, and they usually stand on a conical base; the modelling is very heavy, and the latest specimens are absolutely barbaric.

Until recently the subject of Gaulish terracottas had been greatly neglected; Tudot’s plates were useful, but his text unsatisfactory and devoid of method, there being no proper description of the plates. M. Pottier has given a good summary of his work, and M. Héron de Villefosse has also dealt with some aspects of the subject.[2664] But they had not been treated as a whole and in relation to the subject of ancient terracottas in general until 1891, when an important memoir by M. Blanchet appeared, in which a complete survey of the Gaulish terracottas was given.[2665] This must of necessity form the basis of the present account.

In dealing with the technical character of the terracottas found in Gaul, M. Blanchet points out that the white clay of which many are made (_e.g._ those from the Allier valley) is not universal; some are made of red or grey clay, which has turned white in the baking, apparently by a process analogous to that used by the Chinese for porcelain, others are actually covered with a white _engobe_ like the Greek terracottas. This appears to have been done with a view to subsequent colouring, which in nearly all cases has quite disappeared; but statuettes with remains of colouring, made of purely red clay, have recently been found in the neighbourhood of the Moselle and in Germany.[2666] M. Blanchet quotes an example in the Museum at Angers, with the name of the maker, P · FABI · NICIAE, which is coated with a lead glaze like the enamelled wares described in