Marble statue of a youthful Hercules

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Restorations made during the early 17th century: head and neck, right arm below the shoulder, left arm and shoulder, right leg below the knee, left leg, tree trunk, club, plinth. This statue was part of the collection of antiquities acquired in Rome by the Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani during the first third of the seventeenth century. It must have been made as one of a pair with the over-life-sized statue of a bearded Hercules displayed across the courtyard. Both may have been excavated in the remains of public baths originally constructed under the emperor Nero in A.D. 62, which were located in the vicinity of the Pantheon.

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