Terracotta Nicosthenic neck-amphora (jar)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This distinctive form of amphora with strap handles and a neck sharply separated from the body is originally Etruscan. The decoration here is limited to diagonal lines of impressed dots between pairs of relief lines. During the second half of the sixth century the shape was reinterpreted in Athenian pottery establishments for an Etruscan clientele. The fabric became thinner and, thanks to the techniques of black-figure and red-figure, allowed for vegetal and pictorial embellishment.The principal Athenian workshop purveying such vases to Etruria was that of Nikosthenes.

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