Terracotta lekythos (oil flask)

Sappho Painter

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Herakles and Apollo contesting the Delphic tripod, with Artemis and Athena A favored subject during the third quarter of the sixth century B.C. was the struggle between Herakles and Apollo for the Delphic tripod. The most significant depiction in the Museum's collection appears on a very early red-figure amphora of about 530 B.C. signed by the potter Andokides; it is exhibited in the Greek galleries on the main floor. The lekythos shows a simpler variant of the same subject, complete with the inclusion of white slip, here limited to the shoulder.

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