Marble portrait head of the philosopher Chrysippos

Marble portrait head of the philosopher Chrysippos

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Copy of a Greek statue of the late 3rd century B.C., probably by Euboulides Chrysippos was one of the most important Stoic philosophers of the third century B.C. His writings helped establish Stoicism as a major philosophical movement. Stoicism held that human beings should be free from passion and calmly accept all occurrences as the unavoidable result of divine will. The term Stoic derives from the Greek word stoa, a type of colonnaded building in which the philosophers gathered. It is clear from other copies of this type that Chrysippos was usually represented seated, as a fragile elderly man with his right hand outstretched as if in the midst of making a point. In a manner characteristic of most early Hellenistic art, the viewer would be drawn into the pictorial space and become, as it were, the philosopher's interlocutor. His winning intellect, eloquently conveyed in the features of this head, would have contrasted markedly with his frail old body, emphasizing that the power of the spirit triumphs over physical weakness.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Marble portrait head of the philosopher ChrysipposMarble portrait head of the philosopher ChrysipposMarble portrait head of the philosopher ChrysipposMarble portrait head of the philosopher ChrysipposMarble portrait head of the philosopher Chrysippos

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.