Terracotta barrel jug with strainer

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Barrel-shaped jugs, with and without strainers, are quite common in Archaic Cypriot pottery. Because they do not stand on their own, they must have served a very specific function. Found in tombs mainly in eastern Cyprus, they may have been purely funerary. This example is decorated with a large bird in flight, his talons drawn up, flanked by a pair of lotus flowers.

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