Terracotta Nolan neck-amphora (jar)

Dwarf Painter

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Obverse, Greek fighting an Amazon Reverse, man with staff The combination of subjects on the obverse and reverse is thought-provoking because one is mythological and the other reflects fifth-century B.C. Athens. In its mythological prehistory, Athens was attacked by the Amazons, a tribe of warrior-women whose homeland lay beyond the Black Sea. Theseus, the legendary king of Attica, fought against the invaders and married Antiope, the Amazon queen. The iconography here brings an event of the distant past into the reality of the present.

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