Stucco relief panel

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Draped in a heavy cloak and with an elaborate hairdo, the woman reclines with one knee raised. Her left arm rests against a low support. A pillar from which a swag of drapery hangs is visible just behind her right shoulder and another slender, fluted column stands to the left. A long, thin palm-like branch sketched lightly in the background at the upper left must have been held by another figure, who was approaching the resting woman. Given the Dionysiac subject matter of the other reliefs, this scene may have shown the god as he discovered Ariadne, his future wife, while she was sleeping on the island of Naxos.

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