S64 Prof. Plausmann on the Composition of the Ancteni 
the Florentine Collection, where authentic Etruscan vases are 
placed in the same apartment with others of Grecian origin. In 
the great collection at Naples, I was shown only a single muti- 
lated true Etruscan vase. 
No vestiges of ancient painted vases have, in so far as I know^ 
been found in Italy to the north of the Appenines. Those which 
are preserved in the Museums of Bononia, Turin^ and other 
cities of northern Italy, have migrated into those parts from 
southern Italy» 
It is not my design, in this treatise, to institute any inquiry 
into the periods at which these vases were manufactured, not 
only because investigations have already been made with respect 
to this point by many authors of great learning, but especially 
also because the settlement of it would involve an examination, 
entirely foreign to my views, of the various inscriptions observ- 
ed on those vases, as well as of the subjects and characters of 
the paintings. It is undoubtedly more easy to discover the pe- 
riod up to which these vases may have been fabricated, than the 
time at which the art, commonly considered as of Grecian in- 
vention, but assuredly possessed of claims to a much higher an- 
tiquity took its origin. It seems not improbable, that the 
latest period at which these vessels were manufactured in Italy, 
was the time of the civil wars -f*. The Roman vases, of later 
periods, dug up in many parts of Italy, as at Nola^ Pompeii 
and Rome^ have a very different character. They have no paint- 
ings, but are frequently ornamented with raised figures, and 
usually have a red coating ; characters which are also observed 
in the Roman vases dug up in some parts of Germany and 
France. 
To a later period also belong the vases dug up in great quan- 
tity near Aretium, so far down as the time of VasariusX^ many 
of which are preserved in the Florentine Museum. These vases 
have a red or blackish coating, and, in other respects, are of simi- 
lar composition with the older Etruscan vases §, with which they 
are sometimes confounded. It seems not improbable, that they 
belong to the Aretine vases, so highly esteemed in ancient times, 
* Ritter, 1. cit. p. 230. + Millingen, Peintures antiques, p. 8. 
$ Lanzi, 1. c. p. 39. § Ibid. p. 37. 
