Marble portrait of Matidia Minor

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This head originally belonged to an honorary portrait statue of Mindia Matidia, or Matidia Minor (A.D. 85–162), half-sister of Sabina, wife of the emperor Hadrian, and aunt of the emperor Antoninus Pius. There exist five other replicas of this portrait type, recognized by a recently discovered statue of Matidia Minor from the Roman theater at Suessa Aurunca, a Campanian town of which she was a major benefactor. As is common with members of the imperial family, she is portrayed with an idealized, youthful face, and styling a complex coiffure that includes a hairpiece in the shape of braids coiled on top of her head. Her upward gaze is characteristic of many portraits from the Antonine period onward.

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