The types are both male and female throughout, the latter being usually distinguished by wearing earrings and necklaces. Towards the end of the series the handles are gradually converted into rudimentary arms, and finally into fully developed human arms, sometimes holding attributes. They are probably placed on chairs as emblems of the power and authority which the deceased enjoyed during his life. In the Berlin Museum[2314] there is a remarkable example of the sixth century in which the jar is placed on a chair of the same clay, covered with _graffito_ ornamental designs and figures of animals. The jars are always made of a plain red unglazed clay, and are uncoloured. In the British Museum[2315] there are two seated female figures on detached square bases, wearing bright red chitons and large circular earrings, which seem to represent the period of transition from the jar to the sarcophagus, the style in which they are modelled being that of the fifth century. Some of the later examples have strongly individualised features, and seem to be genuine portraits; it is possible that they are actually from moulds taken from the faces of the dead. (5) PERIOD OF GREEK INFLUENCE; PAINTED POTTERY Although the Etruscans executed such admirable works in bronze, exercised with such skill the art of engraving gems, and produced such refined specimens of filagree-work in gold, they never attained to high excellence in their pottery. The vases already described belong to plastic rather than pictorial art, and are mostly imitations of work in metal. Down to the end of the sixth century B.C. their attempts at painting vases have been, as we have seen, limited practically to two fabrics, the Polledrara ware and the Caere jars with paintings in a similar technique. These methods have, however, nothing in common with Greek vase-paintings of the ordinary kind on a glazed surface, a method which was never popularised in Etruria. The total failure of the Etruscans in vase-painting finds a curious parallel in their sculpture; all their best work is to be sought in their engraving or figures in low relief, as in the mirrors and _cistae_. Yet the same mirrors and _cistae_ show clearly that it was from no lack of ability in drawing that they failed; wherefore it is the less easy to understand, not only the absence of all originality in their painted vases, but also the rarity of instances of their imitative tendencies in this respect.