Terracotta architectural plaque with lotus and palmette designs

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Said to be from Cerveteri Major portions of most Etruscan temples were made of wood, abundantly available in ancient Italy. To protect wooden beams from the elements, they were covered with terracotta slabs of varying dimensions. This mold-made plaque originally was attached to a horizontal beam high on the exterior of an Etruscan temple. It was one of a series that would have created a long decorative frieze for the architrave, the horizontal element just above the columns. Traces of red, blue, and yellow paint indicate how colorful the original appearance of an Etruscan temple must have been.

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