Marble head of a woman

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Copy of a Hellenistic statue of the 3rd or 2nd century B.C. Coiffures with corkscrew curls were fashionable in Egypt and Cyrene during the Ptolemaic period. This head must have represented an important person, as several other copies are known today. This copy was once part of the collection of antiquities formed in Rome during the early seventeenth century by the Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani.

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