Terracotta female figure

Terracotta female figure

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This tau-type (named for its resemblance to the shape of the Greek letter tau) figurine has the conventional hollow, columnar stem with the head rendered somewhat larger in proportion to the body. Characteristically, the figure is high waisted with arms, rendered as singly applied strips of clay, folded neatly over the breasts. She wears a long garment, simply decorated with two vertical lines down the front and back. The figurine's coiffure is particularly distinct, with a plait that is rendered over the top of the headdress and down the back of the neck. A fringe of hair peeks out from under the edge of an elaborately festooned polos. Most of the clay human figures made on the Greek mainland in the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries bce are female and stand in conventional poses with their arms raised, crossed, or held at the sides. Produced in great numbers, such miniature statuettes have been discovered in graves, sanctuaries, and domestic shrines. In general, scholars associate them with the cult of a female deity, and believe they represent either goddesses or worshippers.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.