Terracotta statuette of the Diadoumenos (youth tying a fillet around his head)
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Copy of a Greek bronze statue of ca. 430 B.C. by Polykleitos Connoisseurship and the origins of the discipline of art history began in the Hellenistic period. Greek statues of the fifth century B.C., notably works by Polykleitos, Phidias, and others, were sought out and frequently replicated. The pose of the famous statue of the Diadoumenos by Polykleitos is recognizable in this statuette, but the slender, graceful forms conform to Late Hellenistic taste. Although terracotta was one of the most abundantly available and inexpensive materials of sculptural production in antiquity, it was used to make miniature copies less widely than might be expected. Apparently, only a few centers of production concentrated on this sculptural genre, and those that did limited their choices of subject considerably. The Greek city of Smyrna on the west coast of Asia Minor was among the most important copying centers, and a number of large- and small-scale replicas or variations of well-known statuary types, from both the Classical and Hellenistic periods, were made there.
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.