Terracotta amphora (jar)

Praxias Group

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Artists of the Praxias Group, who probably worked in Vulci, were the first Etruscan vase-painters to develop a simpler version of the true red-figure technique. This vase is a good example of their work. The amphora shape is directly borrowed from Greek, specifically Attic, prototypes. The nude youth leaning on a long walking stick that is repeated on each side is a subject perfectly familiar from the Greek repertoire. What is different is the technique. Here, rather than reserving the figures (painting up to their outline), they are painted in a red-slip over the black-gloss background; then, interior modeling is achieved by incising lines through the superposed red slip.

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