Bronze handles from a large volute-krater (vase for mixing wine and water)

Bronze handles from a large volute-krater (vase for mixing wine and water)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The handles have the distinctive shape associated with a type of krater made in Vulci and exported to Etruscan settlements as far away as Spina in Northern Italy. The youths wearing winged boots and holding the bridles of their horses are almost certainly the twin gods, Castur and Pultuce (Roman: Castor and Pollux), the sons of Zeus; the two are known in Etruscan as Tinas Cliniar. These are the largest and most elaborate handles of this type now extant.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Bronze handles from a large volute-krater (vase for mixing wine and water)Bronze handles from a large volute-krater (vase for mixing wine and water)Bronze handles from a large volute-krater (vase for mixing wine and water)Bronze handles from a large volute-krater (vase for mixing wine and water)Bronze handles from a large volute-krater (vase for mixing wine and water)

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.