Tarentum (modern Taranto) was a wealthy Greek colony on the southeast coast of Italy, a pivotal location along the trade routes between Greece and Italy. During the fourth century B.C., ostentatious grave monuments in the form of small temple-like buildings decorated with painted sculpture filled the city cemetery. This relief must come from such a building. It represents a young warrior and a woman standing by an altar. Between them is a vase for pouring a libation on the altar. On the wall behind them hang a cuirass, a helmet, and a sword, presumably the arms of the dead warrior for whom they mourn. It has been suggested that the relief illustrates a scene from Greek tragedy.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Limestone funerary relief
Period:Hellenistic
Date:ca. 325–300 BCE
Culture:Greek, South Italian, Tarentine
Medium:Limestone
Dimensions:H. 23 1/16 in. (58.5 cm); width as preserved 21 1/8 in. (53.6 cm)
Classification:Stone Sculpture
Credit Line:Fletcher Fund, 1929
Object Number:29.54
Said to be from Taranto, South Italy
[Until 1929, with Jacob Hirsch (1874-1955), Geneva, Switzerland]; acquired in 1929, purchased from Jacob Hirsch.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1929. "A Greek Limestone Relief: A Recent Acquisition." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 24(11), part 1: pp. 301–4.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1930. Handbook of the Classical Collection. pp. 352, 354, fig. 254, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1936[1934]. A Guide to the Collections, Part 1: Ancient and Oriental Art, 2nd edn. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1939. Guide to the Collections: Ancient and Oriental Art--Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Greek and Roman Far Eastern, Near Eastern Oriental Armor, Vol. 1, World's Fair Edition. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1953. Handbook of the Greek Collection. pp. 108, 247, pl. 87c, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1954. Catalogue of Greek Sculptures. no. 119, pp. 72–73, pl. 92a, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC). 1986. Vol. 3: Atherion-Eros. "Elektra I," p. 716, no. 67, pl. 549, Zürich: Artemis Verlag.
Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1987. Greece and Rome. no. 47, pp. 10, 66, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
De Juliis, Ettore M. 2000. Taranto. pp. 127, 129, fig. 39, Bari: Edipuglia.
Picón, Carlos A. 2002. "Sculptural Styles of Magna Graecia." Magna Graecia: Greek Art from South Italy and Sicily, Mr. Michael Bennett, Dr. Aaron Paul, and Mario Iozzo, eds. p. 78, Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art.
Picón, Carlos A. 2007. Art of the Classical World in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Greece, Cyprus, Etruria, Rome no. 173, pp. 153, 437, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Hemingway, Seán. 2021. How to Read Greek Sculpture. no. 27, pp. 34, 118–21, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Zanker, Paul. 2022. Afterlives : Ancient Greek Funerary Monuments in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. no. 37, pp.129–30, 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.
