Marble statue of Hermes

Polykleitos

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Roman after Classical Greek original. Copy or adaptation of a Greek statue of the late 5th or early 4th century B.C. The statue is almost intact, although the surface was strongly cleaned as was the custom in the eighteenth century. During that period, newly excavated ancient sculpture was cleaned and restored in Roman workshops before being sold to members of the European nobility. This work was acquired by the English statesman William Fitzmaurice, second earl of Shelburne, who assembled a distinguished collection of antiquities at Lansdowne House in London. The statue of Hermes once stood in a niche in the dining room at Lansdowne House, serving the same decorative function that it doubtless once served in a Roman villa of the first or second century A.D. The dining room, designed by Robert Adam, is now at the Metropolitan Museum, where it is installed with other period rooms from England.

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