Bronze handle with dogs flanking a reclining youth

Bronze handle with dogs flanking a reclining youth

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This magnificent handle may well represent the sleeping Endymion, the beloved hunter of Artemis, who was granted immortality and eternal youth but also perpetual sleep. The subject is especially appropriate, since such handles are often associated with large bronze vessels that served as cremation urns. Closely parallel to this handle is a pair--one now in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the other in the Antikenmuseum, Berlin--that comes from Città della Pieve, north of Orvieto (ancient Volsinii).

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Bronze handle with dogs flanking a reclining youthBronze handle with dogs flanking a reclining youthBronze handle with dogs flanking a reclining youthBronze handle with dogs flanking a reclining youthBronze handle with dogs flanking a reclining youth

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.