Marble male figure

Marble male figure

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Male figures are rare in Cycladic art. Even less common are examples like this one that exhibit both male and female features. The carved hair (usually painted on female statuettes) and pronounced genitalia are characteristically male, but the artist followed the same overall form used for contemporary female representations, including the clearly defined breasts. Figures of ambiguous gender are found in Aegean sculpture as early as the fifth millennium bce, but their meaning is unknown.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.