Ceramic Burial Tray

Bucchero burial tray, known as a focolare ('brazier'), from an Etruscan tomb. Fragmentary heavy bucchero (bucchero pesante) tray is rectangular, formed of slabs of clay cut to form short rectangular feet on the four corners; above each corner is a rounded finial moulded with a female protome with long tresses, facing outward. The centre front is cut away to form an opening, and on each short side is a thin, horizontal handle, round in section. Part of a group of antiquities purchased by Sir Henry Wellcome from Evangelista Gorga of Rome, circa January 1924.