Marble statue of a seated muse

Marble statue of a seated muse

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Copy of a Greek statue of the 3rd century B.C. Seated on a rock, with her head resting on her right hand, this muse was probably part of a group of statues showing a musical contest between the boastful satyr Marsyas and the god Apollo. The statue was part of the collection of antiquities acquired in Rome by the Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani during the first third of the seventeenth century.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Marble statue of a seated museMarble statue of a seated museMarble statue of a seated museMarble statue of a seated museMarble statue of a seated muse

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.