Limestone Relief with the Figure of a Woman in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, July 2007

Limestone relief with the figure of a woman
Greek, Tarentine, late 4th-early 3rd century BC

Accession # 1999.281

The figure has been identified as Niobe, who in Greek mythology suffered the loss of all her children when she incurred the displeasure of Leto, mother of Apollo and Artemis. Niobe thus became a stock figure of bereavement and would have been highly appropriate on a relief from a funerary monument such as this.

Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art label.