Terracotta lekythos (oil flask)

Achilles Painter

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Seated youth and woman Seated on a stool, the young man hands what appears to be a piece of fruit to the woman standing before him. An oinochoe (jug), a mirror, and a sakkos (snood) are suspended in the background. It is impossible to determine whether this is a vignette of daily life, as depicted by Douris, the Villa Giulia Painter, and many other artists of the mid and later fifth century B.C. It may instead be a funerary representation as depicted on grave stelai; the youth would be the deceased.

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