Marble strigilated vase with snake handles

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The foot is restored. This marble vase with handles in the form of entwined serpents is arguably the finest and best preserved example known today of a type of Roman vessel with a strigilated pattern carved on the body. These elongated S-shaped channels were a popular form of relief decoration on vases and sarcophagi, especially in the second half of the second century and the third century a.d. Two bearded snakes form the handle on either side of the vase. With their upper bodies coiled on the broad shoulder, they stretch their flat heads forward across the deep concavity of the neck to bite the projecting rim, setting up a play of spatial depth and light and dark effects. The motif of entwined serpents is appropriate for a funerary vase. Linked with the earth, snakes were associated with chthonian powers, and the Greeks and Romans regarded them as guardians of sacred places, houses, and tombs. In the absence of a funerary inscription, however, it is not possible to determine whether this vase was originally intended as an ash urn or for purely decorative use.

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.