Terracotta cup with appliqués

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Applied decoration: the infant Herakles strangling the snakes, amphora with a lid, Eros holding a torch Pergamene appliqué pottery, with its lustrous glaze and large repertoire of applied mold-made reliefs, is one of the finest ceramic creations of the Hellenistic period. Even as a baby, Herakles possessed great strength. The snakes he is strangling in this image were sent by the goddess Hera to kill him when she found out that his father, Zeus, had been unfaithful to her with the mortal Alkmene of Thebes.

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