Terracotta lekythos

Attributed to the Cock Painter

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The "Cock Class" painters, identified by the characteristic stylized cock between ivy leaves, produced hundreds of lekythoi in the last quarter of the 6th century and early 5th century B.C. Used for storing oil, they were made in Athens and exported around the Mediterranean. Several have been discovered in Anatolia (present-day Turkey).

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