Pair of gold earrings with dolphins' heads with emerald, glass, and gold beads

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The careful modeling of the dolphin heads is done in repoussé and chasing. The hollow gold bodies are filled with a hard white core. The beads are of emerald, gold, and banded glass, collared by rings of gold granules. The hoops have a wire frame, on which the beads are also strung and around which four wires are spirally wound. The ends of the frames hook into loops below the dolphin jaws.

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