Terracotta amphora (jug)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This vessel was made at Cnidus, a trading and manufacturing port in Caria (southwestern Turkey), famed for its statue of Aphrodite by the Greek sculptor Praxiteles. The relief decoration shows the god Dionysus on one side and Pan with a dancing nymph on the other. Similar scenes can also be found on much grander examples of Roman art, such as mosaics and marble sarcophagi.

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