Bronze statuette of a youth dancing

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This beautiful bronze captures a moment when the full achievement of Classical art began to be used for the representation of a single, transitory state. The youth is nude except for a crown of myrtle, an attribute of followers of the god Dionysos. His pose no longer dictates one primary view, for his torso and legs assume a true contrapposto, and his downward glance reinforced by the direction of the arms makes a rather tight spiral of the whole composition. There is a perfect congruence among all parts of the figure, but the shifts in direction evident from every angle maintain an effect of instability and impermanence.

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