Bronze head of a youth

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This head entered the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art attached to the statuette of a man, 29.48a. Although the surface of the two pieces is comparable, the head is larger in scale and quite different in style. It shows a young man with a full head of hair pulled up and held in place with a band. The square hole on the back of the neck was probably for the attachment of the pony tail that was worn up. While the figure has been identified as Dionysos, it may well be another divinity, such as Apollo, or an athletic mortal.

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