Bronze statuette of a solar deity

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The idealized features and seminudity of this carefully executed bronze statuette suggest that he represents a deity. The radiate crown indicates a solar deity, perhaps Apollo or Helios (called by the Etruscans Apulu and Usil). The object in his left hand may be an incense box. Perhaps his missing right hand once held a patera (libation bowl) resembling that held by another larger male figure (16.174.4).

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