Painted limestone funerary slab with a soldier taking a kantharos from his attendant

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A boy with dark brown skin, standing at the left, holds out a black cup to a tall soldier in a long blue cloak, at the right. The boy holds a lance and supports the soldier's large oval shield against his chest. Almost all the preserved evidence for painting in the Hellenistic period comes from funerary monuments. Some like the vaulted tombs of Macedonia and Thrace show large scale figures and friezes. More modest painted stelai like the ones displayed here have been found in many places in the Eastern Meditereanean.

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