Scarab depicting a hunter,

5th century BCE

On this scarab, a nude hunter marches to the right, holding a bow staff on which his prey hangs. Accompanied by a dog, the man is depicted in profile except for his frontally positioned torso, a convention seen elsewhere in Etruscan art of the fifth century BCE. Scenes of humans in nature, like this hunting scene, were popular subjects on Etruscan engraved gems. Although it is stylistically similar to contemporaneous artwork from Greece, this gemstone exhibits other distinctively Etruscan features. In addition to the rope-like border, the human and animal bodies were crafted in an Etruscan style, in which bodies were formed by overlapping circular incisions of varying size and depth. These details are more easily identified by looking at the nineteenth-century plaster cast displayed beside it.