Sphinx and Stele
Marble stele (grave marker) of a youth and a little girl
ca. 530 BCE
Marble, Attic
This is the most complete grave monument of its type to have survived from the Archaic period. The Met acquired five fragments between 1911 and 1951. A few pieces are represented here as plaster casts: The fragment with a girl’s head was acquired in 1903 by the Berlin Museums, and the one with the youth’s right forearm is in the National Museum in Athens. The capital and crowning sphinx are casts of the originals displayed in a case nearby for closer viewing of their polychromy.
The youth is shown as an athlete with an aryballos (oil flask, used for cleansing after exercise) suspended by a leather strap from his wrist and a pomegranate—associated with fecundity and death in Greek myths—in his hand. Traces of a painted whirling pattern on the aryballos imitate a painted terracotta vase. The smaller figure, presumably his younger sister, holds a flower.
This lavish monument, which stands over thirteen feet high, must have been erected by one of the wealthiest aristocratic families. Some scholars have restored the name of the youth in the inscription as Megakles, a name associated with the powerful Alkmeonidai clan, who opposed the tyrant Peisistratos during most of the second half of the sixth century b.c. Family tombs were sometimes desecrated and destroyed during that conflict, and this stele may have been among them.*
Marble capital and finial in the form of a sphinx, c530 BCE
Marble, Parian
This sculpture originally crowned the tall grave marker on view in this gallery. A plaster copy has been set on the monument itself and a new color reconstruction is displayed nearby. The sphinx retains abundant traces of yellow, red, black, and blue pigment, and the front face of the capital once had a painted design of palmettes and volutes (spiral scrolls).
A mythical creature with a lion’s body, the wings and breast of a bird, and a human head, the sphinx appears in various forms of art throughout the eastern Mediterranean region from the Bronze Age onward. The Greeks pictured it as a winged female and often placed its image on grave monuments as guardian of the dead. This example was carved separately from the rest; its plinth was let into a socket at the top of the capital and secured by a metal dowel and a bed of molten lead. The capital is in the form of two double volutes designed like a lyre.*
Reconstruction of a marble finial in the form of a sphinx
Cast from polymethyl metacrylate, natural pigments in egg tempera, gold foil, and copper
Vinzenz Brinkmann & Ulrike Koch-Brinkmann
The original color on the marble sphinx is unusually well preserved. Scientific analyses, photographs with ultraviolet and infrared light, false-color photographs, and archaeological comparisons allow an almost complete reconstruction of the elegant designs in luminous and precious natural colors. Information is missing regarding additional detailing, such as fine lines subdividing the feathers, which may have been the final step in the original painting process.
"The figure of a sphinx, which originally crowned the so-called Megakles stele in The Met’s collection, is depicted in a squatting posture with the buttocks slightly raised and the face turned towards the viewer of the tomb monument. Colors are remarkably well preserved. Some consolidation had been executed in 20th century with a material that produces a visible luminescence when exposed to UV light.
The reconstruction is based on the scientific and archaeological research of the staff of the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Liebieghaus Polychromy Research Project Frankfurt am Main. Ulrike Koch-Brinkmann and Vinzenz Brinkmann were responsible for the execution of the color reconstruction.
Pigments used in the reconstructions: blue: azurite; red: cinnabar; green: malachite; yellow: Cypriot ocher, lead yellow, dark yellow French ocher; white: kaolin, lead white; black: charred bone; flesh colors: lead white, red and yellow iron oxide gilded copper sheet, gilded copper wire, gilded tin*
Taken from the exhibition
Chroma: Ancient Sculpture in Color
(July 2022 to March 2023)
Ancient Greek and Roman sculpture was once colorful, vibrantly painted and richly adorned with detailed ornamentation. Chroma: Ancient Sculpture in Color reveals the colorful backstory of polychromy—meaning “many colors,” in Greek—and presents new discoveries of surviving ancient color on artworks in The Met’s world-class collection. Exploring the practices and materials used in ancient polychromy, the exhibition highlights cutting-edge scientific methods used to identify ancient color and examines how color helped convey meaning in antiquity, and how ancient polychromy has been viewed and understood in later periods.
The exhibition features a series of reconstructions of ancient sculptures in color by Prof. Dr. V. Brinkmann, Head of the Department of Antiquity at the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung, and Dr. U. Koch-Brinkmann, and introduces a new reconstruction of The Met’s Archaic-period Sphinx finial, completed by The Liebieghaus team in collaboration with The Met.Presented alongside original Greek and Roman works representing similar subjects, the reconstructions are the result of a wide array of analytical techniques, including 3D imaging and rigorous art historical research. Polychromy is a significant area of study for The Met, and the Museum has a long history of investigating, preserving, and presenting manifestations of original color on ancient statuary.
[*The Met]
In the Met
The Metropolitan Museum of Art was conceived in Paris by John Jay in Paris, 1866, as a "national institution and gallery of art" for the American people. The Union League Club in New York campaigned for funding, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art opened to the public in 1870, in the Dodworth Building 681 Fifth Avenue. Initially formed from donations by its founders, the Museum collection increased to the point that it outgrew the initial site, and then a consecutive one, moving to its current location (on Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street) in 1880.
The initial museum building was designed by Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould, with extensions added from 1888 onwards - the Fifth Avenue facade, Grand Stairway, and Great Hall, designed by Richard Morris Hunt, opened 1902, and the Fifth Avenue wings by McKim, Mead & White in 1910. The last major development was the installation of glass at the sides and rear of the building, designed by Roch-Dinkeloo in 2011-12.
Taken in Manhattan
Sphinx and Stele
Marble stele (grave marker) of a youth and a little girl
ca. 530 BCE
Marble, Attic
This is the most complete grave monument of its type to have survived from the Archaic period. The Met acquired five fragments between 1911 and 1951. A few pieces are represented here as plaster casts: The fragment with a girl’s head was acquired in 1903 by the Berlin Museums, and the one with the youth’s right forearm is in the National Museum in Athens. The capital and crowning sphinx are casts of the originals displayed in a case nearby for closer viewing of their polychromy.
The youth is shown as an athlete with an aryballos (oil flask, used for cleansing after exercise) suspended by a leather strap from his wrist and a pomegranate—associated with fecundity and death in Greek myths—in his hand. Traces of a painted whirling pattern on the aryballos imitate a painted terracotta vase. The smaller figure, presumably his younger sister, holds a flower.
This lavish monument, which stands over thirteen feet high, must have been erected by one of the wealthiest aristocratic families. Some scholars have restored the name of the youth in the inscription as Megakles, a name associated with the powerful Alkmeonidai clan, who opposed the tyrant Peisistratos during most of the second half of the sixth century b.c. Family tombs were sometimes desecrated and destroyed during that conflict, and this stele may have been among them.*
Marble capital and finial in the form of a sphinx, c530 BCE
Marble, Parian
This sculpture originally crowned the tall grave marker on view in this gallery. A plaster copy has been set on the monument itself and a new color reconstruction is displayed nearby. The sphinx retains abundant traces of yellow, red, black, and blue pigment, and the front face of the capital once had a painted design of palmettes and volutes (spiral scrolls).
A mythical creature with a lion’s body, the wings and breast of a bird, and a human head, the sphinx appears in various forms of art throughout the eastern Mediterranean region from the Bronze Age onward. The Greeks pictured it as a winged female and often placed its image on grave monuments as guardian of the dead. This example was carved separately from the rest; its plinth was let into a socket at the top of the capital and secured by a metal dowel and a bed of molten lead. The capital is in the form of two double volutes designed like a lyre.*
Reconstruction of a marble finial in the form of a sphinx
Cast from polymethyl metacrylate, natural pigments in egg tempera, gold foil, and copper
Vinzenz Brinkmann & Ulrike Koch-Brinkmann
The original color on the marble sphinx is unusually well preserved. Scientific analyses, photographs with ultraviolet and infrared light, false-color photographs, and archaeological comparisons allow an almost complete reconstruction of the elegant designs in luminous and precious natural colors. Information is missing regarding additional detailing, such as fine lines subdividing the feathers, which may have been the final step in the original painting process.
"The figure of a sphinx, which originally crowned the so-called Megakles stele in The Met’s collection, is depicted in a squatting posture with the buttocks slightly raised and the face turned towards the viewer of the tomb monument. Colors are remarkably well preserved. Some consolidation had been executed in 20th century with a material that produces a visible luminescence when exposed to UV light.
The reconstruction is based on the scientific and archaeological research of the staff of the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Liebieghaus Polychromy Research Project Frankfurt am Main. Ulrike Koch-Brinkmann and Vinzenz Brinkmann were responsible for the execution of the color reconstruction.
Pigments used in the reconstructions: blue: azurite; red: cinnabar; green: malachite; yellow: Cypriot ocher, lead yellow, dark yellow French ocher; white: kaolin, lead white; black: charred bone; flesh colors: lead white, red and yellow iron oxide gilded copper sheet, gilded copper wire, gilded tin*
Taken from the exhibition
Chroma: Ancient Sculpture in Color
(July 2022 to March 2023)
Ancient Greek and Roman sculpture was once colorful, vibrantly painted and richly adorned with detailed ornamentation. Chroma: Ancient Sculpture in Color reveals the colorful backstory of polychromy—meaning “many colors,” in Greek—and presents new discoveries of surviving ancient color on artworks in The Met’s world-class collection. Exploring the practices and materials used in ancient polychromy, the exhibition highlights cutting-edge scientific methods used to identify ancient color and examines how color helped convey meaning in antiquity, and how ancient polychromy has been viewed and understood in later periods.
The exhibition features a series of reconstructions of ancient sculptures in color by Prof. Dr. V. Brinkmann, Head of the Department of Antiquity at the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung, and Dr. U. Koch-Brinkmann, and introduces a new reconstruction of The Met’s Archaic-period Sphinx finial, completed by The Liebieghaus team in collaboration with The Met.Presented alongside original Greek and Roman works representing similar subjects, the reconstructions are the result of a wide array of analytical techniques, including 3D imaging and rigorous art historical research. Polychromy is a significant area of study for The Met, and the Museum has a long history of investigating, preserving, and presenting manifestations of original color on ancient statuary.
[*The Met]
In the Met
The Metropolitan Museum of Art was conceived in Paris by John Jay in Paris, 1866, as a "national institution and gallery of art" for the American people. The Union League Club in New York campaigned for funding, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art opened to the public in 1870, in the Dodworth Building 681 Fifth Avenue. Initially formed from donations by its founders, the Museum collection increased to the point that it outgrew the initial site, and then a consecutive one, moving to its current location (on Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street) in 1880.
The initial museum building was designed by Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould, with extensions added from 1888 onwards - the Fifth Avenue facade, Grand Stairway, and Great Hall, designed by Richard Morris Hunt, opened 1902, and the Fifth Avenue wings by McKim, Mead & White in 1910. The last major development was the installation of glass at the sides and rear of the building, designed by Roch-Dinkeloo in 2011-12.
Taken in Manhattan