Terracotta head and torso of a woman

Terracotta head and torso of a woman

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Terracotta figures such as this have traditionally been called dolls. Small-scale representations of human figures, mostly women, exist in a great variety of forms; they may have movable limbs, their limbs may be truncated as here, and they may have any number of attributes. Their role, therefore, certainly extended beyond child's play to rituals, the theater, and certainly the grave.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Terracotta head and torso of a womanTerracotta head and torso of a womanTerracotta head and torso of a womanTerracotta head and torso of a womanTerracotta head and torso of a woman

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.