Terracotta lekythos (oil flask)

Inscription Painter

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Woman and warrior at a tomb Having come apart at the shoulder, this lekythos was left disassembled in order to show the interior. Attic funerary lekythoi typically have a small bulb inside the body at the end of the neck. The purpose was to economize in the amount of oil offered to the dead. The shape of the bulb tends to vary by workshop. The vase is also significant iconographically. The woman holds a helmet, presumably that of the deceased. On the far side of the monument stands an armed warrior—a mourner or an image of the fallen soldier? Of further note is the drinking cup and the phialai (libation bowls) that are suspended on the tombstone and in the background.

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