Fragment of a marble relief with dancing maenads

Fragment of a marble relief with dancing maenads

Kallimachos

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Adaptation of a Greek relief of about 425–400 B.C. attributed to Kallimachos In myth and art the wine god, Dionysos, is accompanied by dancing women known as maenads. The most famous description of them comes from The Bacchae, a play by Euripides produced in Athens in the late fifth century B.C. The most famous representations are from a relief of dancing maenads carved at the same time. This small relief is a reduced copy dating from the Roman period.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Fragment of a marble relief with dancing maenadsFragment of a marble relief with dancing maenadsFragment of a marble relief with dancing maenadsFragment of a marble relief with dancing maenadsFragment of a marble relief with dancing maenads

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.