Limestone grave marker

Limestone grave marker

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Two men reclining at a banquet are represented in the upper panel, while a couple seen from the waist up fill the space below. The Cypriots were among the first to represent banquets on funerary monuments. As on the sarcophagus (74.51.2451) nearby, such a scene may have simply evoked the pleasures of daily life or it may have been intended to elevate the deceased to a heroic level.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.