Gold and enamel a baule earring

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This earring represents one of the most common types in Etruscan jewelry but with exceptionally elaborate embellishment. The curved body consists of two metopes, both of which contain floral ornaments. The flower at the top was made separately and attached; the more stylized motif below was made of wire fused to the underlying surface. The very top of the object preserves two heads showing women wearing tiny disk earrings inlaid with enamel; there will originally have been a third. Immediately below is a band of tongues in alternately lighter and darker blue enamel. The whole conception is markedly architectonic, on the one hand, and executed with the most delicate means, on the other.

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