Fragments of a terracotta amphora (jar)

Amasis Painter

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

On the body, obverse and reverse, Dionysos, satyrs, and maenads Subsidiary panel on the obverse, satyrs and maenads These fragments originally belonged to a rare and particularly engaging type of amphora in the Amasis Painter's oeuvre. The decoration consisted of the primary figural scene but also of a subsidiary frieze at the top of the panel. In addition to the black-figure technique, the artist employed simple outline to render the flesh parts of the maenads. This use of pure drawn line came into its own about 530 B.C. as the red-figure technique. The Amasis Painter and contemporaries such as Sakonides anticipated, in some works, the new manner of decoration.

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