Greek and Roman statues were designed to give a colorful lifelike impression. Marble and wood sculptures were brightly painted, and bronze statues were originally a pale fleshlike brown. Lips and nipples were often inlaid with copper, and teeth with silver. Eyes were usually made separately and set into prepared sockets. This pair, designed for an over-lifesize statue, gives a sense of the potent immediacy that ancient sculpture could convey.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Pair of eyes
Period:Classical
Date:5th century BCE or later
Culture:Greek
Medium:Bronze, marble, frit, quartz, obsidian
Dimensions:maximum H. 1 1/2 in. (3.8 cm) maximum length 2in. (5.1cm)
Classification:Bronzes
Credit Line:Purchase, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis B. Cullman Gift and Norbert Schimmel Bequest, 1991
Accession Number:1991.11.3a, b
[Until 1991, with the Merrin Gallery, New York]; acquired in 1991, purchased from the Merrin Gallery.
Picón, Carlos A., Elizabeth J. Milleker, and Joan R. Mertens. 1991. "Recent Acquisitions: A Selection 1990–1991." Bulletin of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 49(2): p. 8.
Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1991. "One Hundred Twenty-first Annual Report of the Trustees for the Fiscal Year July 1, 1990 through June 30, 1991." Annual Report of the Trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 121: p. 32.
Haynes, Denys E.L. 1992. The Technique of Greek Bronze Statuary. pp. 106–7, pl. 10, Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern.
Hemingway, Seán A. 2000. "Bronze Sculpture." Making Classical Art: Process and Practice, Roger Ling, ed. p. 44, pl. 3, Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia.
Hemingway, Seán. 2000. "A Technical Analysis of the Bronze Horse and Jockey Group from Artemision." From the Parts to the Whole: Acta of the 13th International Bronze Congress held at Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 28 - June 1, 1996, Carol Mattusch, Amy Brauer, and Sandra E. Knudsen, eds. p. 232 n. 15, Portsmith, R.I.: Journal of Roman Archaeology.
Hemingway, Seán Dr. 2004. The Horse and Jockey from Artemision: A Bronze Equestrian Monument of the Hellenistic Period. p. 12, fig. 8
, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Picón, Carlos A. 2007. Art of the Classical World in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Greece, Cyprus, Etruria, Rome no. 141, pp. 127, 433, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Panzanetti, Roberta, Eike D. Schmidt, and Kenneth Lapatin. 2008. The Color of Life: Polychromy in Sculpture from Antiquity to the Present p. 109, fig. 77, Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Trust.
Plantzos, Dimitris. 2018. The Art of Painting in Ancient Greece. p. 172, fig. 164, Atlanta: Lockwood Press.
Hemingway, Seán. 2021. How to Read Greek Sculpture. no. 13, pp. 36, 79, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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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.
