Terracotta statuette of a goddess

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This large statuette belongs to a class of statuettes produced to imitate or echo monumental sculptures in bronze or marble. The large scale, baroque style, and quality of execution point to a major coroplastic workshop in Asia Minor, possibly Myrina. The figure most likely represents a deity because of her polos headdress. It has been suggested that she is Tyche, the personification of fortune, who enjoyed widespread popularity in Hellenistic and Roman times. In terms of iconography, however, the pose and arrangement of drapery are more akin to representations of Aphrodite, while this type of polos, characteristic of Persephone, is very different from the mural crowns typically worn by Tyche.

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