Bronze bowl with handles terminating in lotuses

Bronze bowl with handles terminating in lotuses

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Although the lotus motif came from the East, bronze bowls or basins with lotiform handles seem to have been a Cypriot invention that flourished from the Geometric into the Archaic period. Such large examples are rare. Smaller bowls are more common and exist also in terracotta. Moreover, they were exported to the Levant, the Aegean region, and Italy.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Bronze bowl with handles terminating in lotusesBronze bowl with handles terminating in lotusesBronze bowl with handles terminating in lotusesBronze bowl with handles terminating in lotusesBronze bowl with handles terminating in lotuses

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.