Marble head of a kouros (youth)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Owing to the worn surface, it is difficult to identify the figure as male or female. However, the hairstyle in which the hair on the nape of the neck is looped up over a band, the holes indicating the original existence of an added bronze band—probably a wreath—and the absence of earrings suggest a young man. The soft fullness of the physiognomy indicates an Island workshop in the northern Aegean Sea.

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