The painted scene resembles contemporary wall paintings, with carefully modeled figures set against a saturated color background. It depicts a bride surrounded by attendants wearing garments in subtle shades of pink, lavender, and blue. A pale white defines the transparent mantle of the bride, and a golden yellow and deep red highlight jewelry, suggesting combinations of gold and colored stones. Made for a tomb, the vessel had a commemorative rather than a utilitarian function, and its form mimics Greek temple architecture.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Terracotta vase
Period:Hellenistic
Date:3rd–2nd century BCE
Culture:Greek, Sicilian, Centuripe
Medium:Terracotta
Dimensions:H. 15 1/2 in. (39.4 cm)
Classification:Vases
Credit Line:Purchase, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, 1953
Accession Number:53.11.5
Said to have been found in Centuripe, Sicily
[Until 1953, with Elie Borowski, New York]; acquired in 1953, purchased from E. Borowski
Trendall, Arthur Dale. 1955. "A New Polychrome Vase from Centuripe." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 13(5): p. 162.
von Bothmer, Dietrich. 1972. Greek Vase Painting: An Introduction. no. 35, pp. 8, 67, 71, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
von Bothmer, Dietrich. 1972. "Greek Vase Painting." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 31(1): no. 29, pp. 8, 66, 68.
Joly, Elda. 1980. "Teorie vecchie e nuove sulla ceramica policroma." Philias Charin. Miscellanea di Studi Classici in onore di Eugenio Manni. p. 1249, Rome: Giorgio Bretschneider Editore.
Mayo, Margaret Ellen and Kenneth Hamma. 1982. The Art of South Italy: Vases from Magna Graecia no. 143, pp. 254, 282, 283, Richmond: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1987. Greece and Rome. no. 63, pp. 84–85, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Gazda, Elaine K. 2000. The Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii: Ancient Ritual, Modern Muse pp. 109–10, 208, fig. 10.8, Ann Arbor: Kelsey Museum of Archaeology.
Gazda, Elaine K. 2000. The Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii : Ancient Ritual, Modern Muse pp. 109–10, fig. 108, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Museum of Art.
Lyons, Claire, Michael Bennett, and Clemente Marconi. 2013. Sicily: Art and Invention between Greece and Rome pp. 6–7, fig. 4, Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum.
Stewart, Andrew F. 2014. Art in the Hellenistic World.. pp. 257–58, fig. 154, New York: Cambridge University Press.
Galitz, Kathryn. 2016. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Masterpiece Paintings. no. 23, p. 29, New York: Skira.
Plantzos, Dimitris. 2018. The Art of Painting in Ancient Greece. pp. 266–68, figs. 265–66, Atlanta: Lockwood Press.
Zanker, Paul. 2022. Afterlives : Ancient Greek Funerary Monuments in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. no. 46, pp. 148–49, New York: Scala Publishers.
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The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than 30,000 works ranging in date from the Neolithic period to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312.
