Limestone sarcophagus
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
On the long sides A: Hunt B: Banquet On the short sides A: Chariot scene B: Perseus departs with the head of the Gorgon Medusa. The winged horse Pegasos and the hero Chrysaor are born from her severed neck. Like the large sarcophagus in the adjacent gallery, this chest-shaped sarcophagus stands on four square feet and has a lid in the form of a peaked roof. The scenes carved in low relief on all four sides have parallels in Greek art but show variations in style and in detail that were introduced by the artists working at Golgoi. In the hunting scene two pairs of warriors armed as hoplites (foot soldiers) attack a bull and a boar while a single archer approaches from the left with drawn bow. Three trees fill the background and a horse, a rooster, and a dog complete the composition. While pairs of fighting warriors were common motifs in Greek art, the Cypriot sculptor has conflated a battle scene with a hunting scene and has also taken more liberties with the scale of the animals than is usually found in Greek art. The archer may represent the deceased, and he may also be shown on the other three sides of the sarcophagus: reclining alone in the banquet scene, riding in the chariot drawn by four horses, and even as Perseus, the Greek hero who decapitated Medusa, the Gorgon who turned men to stone.
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.