For the assignment given for the trip to New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art, I chose five works of art to study closely. I picked one work of art from each of five stylistic periods. These stylistic periods are: Ancient Near East, Egyptian, Greek and Roman, Islamic, and Medieval. I chose the Lamassu from the Ancient Near East stylistic period. Of the Egyptian period, I picked the Magical Stela. From the Greek and Roman stylistic period I selected the Kouros. The Islamic work that I chose was the work simply known as the Figure. I picked the Circle of Alexander from the Medieval stylistic period. .
Of the Ancient Near East stylistic period in the museum, I chose the Lamassu, a human-headed, winged bull and lion. There are a few differences of what can be clearly seen in the image of the Lamassu on the museum's website and the actual sculpture on display. The greatest differences are those of the human-headed winged bull because the website only offers a picture of the human-headed winged lion. The image of the lion shows that it has a human ear, but when I looked at the bull in the museum, I noticed that it had ears of a bull. It was rather clear that the toenails of the lion and bull were small when examining the sculpture in the museum, but I could not see this in the computer image of the Lamassu. I could not appreciate the texture of the Lamassu's beard just by examining the picture. When I saw the Lamassu in the museum, the beard's magnificent was one of the first details of the sculpture that I noticed. I did not think the wing of the Lamassu was as big as it was until I saw the sculpture in the museum. A rope that is tied on the Lamassu's side is difficult to make out in the picture from the museum's website, but it was obvious when I looked at the actual Lamassu in the museum. When I examined the Lamassu in the museum, I realized there was more to the sculpture than just the lion.
