Marble relief fragment with male torso

Marble relief fragment with male torso

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The figure wears a body cuirass (breastplate and backplate), which is detectable only along bottom edge where the vertical folds of a short chiton are visible. This type of cuirass was no longer in fashion in the 1st century B.C., when the relief was carved, but was commonly used in sculpture for heroic figures. The fragment was originally part of a larger scene that decorated a votive or funerary relief.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Marble relief fragment with male torsoMarble relief fragment with male torsoMarble relief fragment with male torsoMarble relief fragment with male torsoMarble relief fragment with male torso

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.