“This makes you think about beauty and especially female beauty as being both enchanting and dangerous.”
Curator Kiki Karaglou on a Greek sphinx from about 530 BCE that served as a grave marker and was thought to be a guardian of the dead.
Monsters
Kiki Karoglou
2 min. watch
Contributors
Kiki Karoglou
Assistant Curator, Department of Greek and Roman Art
Assistant Curator, Department of Greek and Roman Art
Photography by Katherine Dahab
Art Mentioned
Greek, Attic
ca. 530 BCE
More from The Met
Despite its grandeur, the monument seemed so personal, so intimate and melancholic.
Rick Riordan
June 11, 2024
An encounter with an ancient devotional figure reminds us that images can stand in for people.
Adam Eaker
October 6
A roundtable discussion explores gender presentation, the history of fashion, and mockery in medieval depictions of Saint Jerome.
Nancy Thebaut, Jesse Darling, Ayla Lepine, and Clovis Maillet
March 24
More in:Religion and Spirituality