Silver phiale (libation bowl)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This bowl is the earliest of the Museum's traditional phialai with a pronounced omphalos (navel), or central boss; the hollow underside furnished a grip for two fingers when the phiale was tilted to pour a libation. Stylized lotos blossoms are engraved on the gently curving surface of the bowl. The boss, with its collar decorated with embossed animals, was originally covered by another gilded metal layer, as on the adjacent bowl.

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