Marble portrait bust of a man

Marble portrait bust of a man

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This powerful portrait bust incorporates a large expanse of chest, a stylistic characteristic indicating that it was carved toward the middle of the first century A.D. Most surviving portraits worked in this hard realistic manner date to the first century B.C., but the style continued in fashion until the mid-first century A.D. and was revived intermittently thereafter.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.