Terracotta skyphos (drinking cup with two handles)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The skyphos (drinking cup) belongs to a group of eight terracotta vases (10.210.1-.8) that are said to be from Athens. Despite the absence of archaeological record, they were probably found together in a tomb. Such groups are well attested in excavated burials. Moreover, the iconography of the two neck-amphorae, particularly the one with the mourning women on the neck, is appropriate for a funerary purpose. The group displays stylistic changes that occurred from about 730-700 BCE, a time of artistic innovation that resulted in the end of the formal precision of the Geometric style and the rise of the exuberant Protoattic style. The skyphos is one of the earliest pieces of the group, as indicated by the strictly geometric painted decoration. The gadrooned decoration―with its oblong motifs rendered both by the painted pattern and the shallow relief impressed around the wall ―recalls more expensive prototypes in metal.

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