Bronze torso of a youth

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Roman overcast of a Greek bronze statue of the early 5th century B.C. In antiquity most large freestanding statues were made of bronze rather than marble. Hundreds honoring victorious athletes, poets, or generals stood in the great sanctuaries, as well as in civic centers. The majority of these works are lost–melted down at some point in order to reuse the metal. We know something of their appearance because the Romans admired many of the well-known statues and had them copied in marble, sometimes in bronze. This torso appears to be a bronze replica of a Greek bronze statue dating from the early fifth century B.C. During that period, sculptors were beginning to substitute a more relaxed naturalistic stance for the rigid pose that had been used for a hundred and fifty years to represent a youth. The fact that the left hip seems slightly higher than the right suggests that this figure may have been posed with most of its weight on the left leg and the right knee slightly bent.

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