Finial of a marble stele (grave marker)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The pair of volutes on this finial is carved with extraordinary sensitivity. The crowning element, which is missing, may have been a palmette or a sphinx. The latter is less likely, given the limited size of the volute block. The reported discovery of this piece near the beautiful fragment with the head of a youth raises the possibility that both originally belonged to the same stele.

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