Marble cinerary urn

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This Roman cinerary urn is highly unusual in having the spoils of war as its principal theme. Despite the fragmentary nature of the piece, the trophies and piles of weapons and armor that cover the back and sides of the rectilinear box are very striking. In both detail and composition, the panels are representative of high-quality workmanship, suggesting that the work was a special commission. Sadly, much of the front, where the inscription recording the name of the deceased would have been, is missing. The urn is said to have been excavated from a tomb near Anagni, southeast of Rome, in 1899. Other marble funerary urns in the Museum’s collection (see 96.9.222a, b; 25.78.29; and 27.122.2a, b; on display in the courtyard) belong to much more common types of Roman funerary art, cinerary urns that either resemble actual receptacles (vases or baskets) or are in the form of altars or miniature buildings. In both iconography and craftsmanship, the present urn foreshadows the elaborate sarcophagi of the Mid-Imperial 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