Gold bowl

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A rosette fills the center. The two concentric zones are presented as papyrus swamps. The inner one is inhabited by ducks, the outer one by three bulls and three fallow deer whose lower extremities are covered by the vegetation. The animals are rendered with considerably greater energy and verisimilitude than the papyrus, suggesting what the artist had and had not actually observed.

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