Etruscan Red-Figured Genucilia Group Footed Plate with Female Profile Head,

 Caere or Falerii, ca. Mid-4th Century BCE

A footed terracotta plate of classic Genucilia form: a broad, shallow dish with an overhanging flattened rim, rising on a slender hollow stem to a flaring disc foot. The interior medallion is painted in black glaze with the distinctive profile bust of a woman facing left, her hair gathered in a sakkos (hair-net/cap) with wavy locks escaping at the temple and a pendant earring at the ear — the canonical Genucilia decorative scheme. The tondo is framed by a band of running spiral-wave (wave/ivy) ornament, and the rim bears the characteristic schematic ivy or laurel sprays in silhouette. The underside of the dish retains sweeping black-glaze brushstrokes — a typical finishing gesture on Caeretan Genucilia workshop products.

Genucilia plates comprise a series of some 600 published examples produced in Etruria — chiefly at Caere and Falerii — over the 4th and early 3rd centuries BCE, and are most frequently recovered from funerary contexts as tomb offerings. They were first isolated as a class by Sir John Beazley in 1947 and systematically catalogued by Mario Del Chiaro in 1957.

Dimensions: 5-5/8 inches (13.6cm) D.   
Condition: with expected surface wear; losses and flaking to the black glaze on the rim and stem, mineral/earthen deposits from burial, overall a characteristic and evocative example of the group. Rare.

Compare similar examples in Italy of the Etruscans, by Ines Jucker no. 316-319.    Provenance: Ex Collection D., Vienna, acquired in the Viennese art trade (Dorotheum) in the 1970s to 1980s.