Faience appliqué with a bust of Dionysos

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The use of faience, a material of Egyptian origin, for an object of Greek type and style exhibits an interesting combination of Greek and Egyptian workmanship that has been documented at Alexandria but is likely to have existed elsewhere as well. This piece, unlike the better known Ptolemaic faience oinochoai with relief decoration, does not appear to have belonged to a vessel and points to another use for faience appliqués in the Hellenistic period.

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