Marble relief fragment with the torso of a Hesperid holding apples

Marble relief fragment with the torso of a Hesperid holding apples

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Copy of a Greek marble relief of about 420–410 B.C. This relief showed Herakles in the garden of the Hesperides receiving the golden apples that brought immortality. The original was one of four famous reliefs that probably decorated the parapet surrounding the Altar of the Twelve Gods in the Athenian Agora.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Marble relief fragment with the torso of a Hesperid holding applesMarble relief fragment with the torso of a Hesperid holding applesMarble relief fragment with the torso of a Hesperid holding applesMarble relief fragment with the torso of a Hesperid holding applesMarble relief fragment with the torso of a Hesperid holding apples

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.