Limestone funerary relief

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Tarentum (modern Taranto) was a wealthy Greek colony on the southeast coast of Italy, a pivotal location along the trade routes between Greece and Italy. During the fourth century B.C., ostentatious grave monuments in the form of small temple-like buildings decorated with painted sculpture filled the city cemetery. This relief must come from such a building. It represents a young warrior and a woman standing by an altar. Between them is a vase for pouring a libation on the altar. On the wall behind them hang a cuirass, a helmet, and a sword, presumably the arms of the dead warrior for whom they mourn. It has been suggested that the relief illustrates a scene from Greek tragedy.

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