Terracotta bell-krater (vase for mixing wine and water)

Meleager Painter

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Obverse, satyrs and maenads Reverse, three youths The gentrification of the followers of Dionysos on this vase is worth noting. Whereas vases of the late sixth and the first half of the fifth centuries B.C. emphasized the irrational and animal energies of satyrs and maenads, by the turn of the fifth to the fourth century, these figures had become quite sedate.

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