Marble pediment of a funerary altar

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This fragment of an altar is from a commemorative monument in which identifying inscriptions would have appeared on the shaft below the three portrait busts. Since that part of the altar is now missing, the relationship between the figures is not known. The woman at the center, whose hairstyle suggests a date in the early second century A.D., is the main focus of attention and so is thought to be the mother of the two men, who look respectfully toward her. It may be that they died first, and their grieving mother, who is presented in a more lifelike pose, was left to set up this monument.

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