"Cani in corsa" fra Veio e Cerveteri": il gruppo del Furetto

In this article, the Author revisits from a different angle a subject he had already addressed in the past (1997, 2007), namely the Etrusco-Corinthian Ferret Group. It is a stylistic group of vases decorated on the belly or the shoulder with distinctive friezes of running dogs that always show the forelegs raised above the ground line. The group is named after the "Furetto" (= Ferret) as identified by Carlo Albizzati on a Vatican cup. The author takes new evidence into account in order to provide a fuller picture of this group, enlarging the list of attributions and discussing both the production place and the chronology of the vases. A methodological appendix is added regarding the classification method of vessels decorated in the silhouette technique: the Author argues that a trained and skillful painter was able to draw three or four little figures of "running dogs" with the speed and confidence with which today we write a signature. His assumption is that the silhouettes are like signatures because they were intentionally distinctive and consequently we can today recognize them at first glance and attribute them with some certainty to specific groups and hands.