Bronze handle from a cista (toiletry box)

Bronze handle from a cista (toiletry box)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

These solid-cast handles depict a popular subject in Etruscan art, warriors carrying the body of a fallen comrade from the battlefield. In these two examples, all the figures are nude, but some handles show them wearing armor, and occasionally the carriers are given wings, indicating that they are the personifications of Sleep and Death.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Bronze handle from a cista (toiletry box)Bronze handle from a cista (toiletry box)Bronze handle from a cista (toiletry box)Bronze handle from a cista (toiletry box)Bronze handle from a cista (toiletry box)

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.