Terracotta tripod

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The lozenge and checker motifs evoke the openwork of bronze furnishings. Two of the three legs have figural motifs: a man between two fish and another between two small quadrupeds. This decoration associates the piece with four-sided bronze stands that were made on Cyprus at the very end of the Bronze Age and that combine indigenous and Aegean iconography. Decorated ceramic tripods also preserved features that were adopted in Attic Geometric pottery.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than thirty thousand works ranging in date from the Neolithic period (ca. 4500 B.C.) to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312. It includes the art of many cultures and is among the most comprehensive in North America. The geographic regions represented are Greece and Italy, but not as delimited by modern political frontiers: Greek colonies were established around the Mediterranean basin and on the shores of the Black Sea, and Cyprus became increasingly Hellenized. For Roman art, the geographical limits coincide with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The department also exhibits the art of prehistoric Greece (Helladic, Cycladic, and Minoan) and pre-Roman art of Italic peoples, notably the Etruscans.

Metropolitan Museum of Art