Bronze nose piece from a horse's trappings

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The decoration is divided into three tiers. In the uppermost, a swan (which may allude to the myth of Leda) approaches a woman who extends her palm; to the right, another woman is seated by an overturned jar. In the second tier, a seated woman is confronted by a standing woman with an outstreched right hand. In the third tier, two nude men are depicted with a seated woman in a tub-like boat. Scholars have debated the identification of this incised, bronze nose piece. It has been considered to be an Etruscan work of the third century B.C. but is, more likely, a much later Roman work of the fourth century A.D.

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