Marble sarcophagus fragment

Marble sarcophagus fragment

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The relief, which originally formed the front panel of a large sarcophagus, depicts the death of the Greek hero Meleager, famous for killing the Calydonian boar. On other Roman sarcophagi this scene accompanies that of the hunt itself, showing Meleager spearing the ferocious boar. However, here the focus is on the dying hero who is being carried home surrounded by his grieving father and companions. During the Renaissance the scene became the prototype for artistic representations of the Deposition of Christ. The panel, as it now survives, includes 16th-century restorations.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.