Marble relief of a horseman

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This relief of a pacing horse with a nude rider is a tour de force of almost excessively sensitive surface texture and exaggerated anatomical detail. Decorative showiness takes precedence over organic unity, in a style often found in classicizing works of the first century B.C. The piece may copy one that was well-known in antiquity, for two others are preserved that show an almost identical horseman followed by another rider on a horse with the same pacing gait.

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