Lower part of a marble seated statue of Hygieia

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Copy or adaptation of a Greek work of the 3rd or 2nd century B.C. Hygieia, the personification of Health, was the daughter of Asklepios, the god of healing. Snakes were closely associated with both figures and were actually kept in many of the sanctuaries where the sick gathered. This Hygieia was shown feeding a gigantic serpent. The statue was once part of the collection formed in Rome in 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