Glass jug with chain handle
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Colorless with pale blue green tinge; handle and trails in same glass. Outsplayed rim with flattened upper lip; funnel-shaped mouth and almost no neck; conical body, then turned in sharply with broad, horizontal undercurve; applied solid foot ring, sloping outwards; central kick in bottom with circular pontil mark; chain handle applied to body as two large, thick pads, drawn up and outwards as two rods, pinched together five times to form vertical row of loop, then turned in as a single strap, folded up into a hollow loop above rim, and trailed off in a double fold down underside of mouth over upper trail. Single thick horizontal trail on underside of mouth below rim; a finer trail wound horizontally slightly more than once around top of body; body decorated with a pattern of twenty ribs extending from mouth to edge of side, becoming faint towards bottom. Complete except for weathered chip in rim, with cracks around mouth and top of body; some pinprick bubbles in foot ring; limy encrustation, dulling, iridescence, and creamy brown weathering, with soil encrustation on handle and interior. The jug is said to have been found in a Roman tomb at the ancient site of Caesaromagus in 1863, together with another smaller jug (81.10.169), a cup (81.10.85), and a coin of the Gallic emperor Postumus, which was minted between A.D. 260 and 268.
Greek and Roman Art
An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than thirty thousand works ranging in date from the Neolithic period (ca. 4500 B.C.) to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312. It includes the art of many cultures and is among the most comprehensive in North America. The geographic regions represented are Greece and Italy, but not as delimited by modern political frontiers: Greek colonies were established around the Mediterranean basin and on the shores of the Black Sea, and Cyprus became increasingly Hellenized. For Roman art, the geographical limits coincide with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The department also exhibits the art of prehistoric Greece (Helladic, Cycladic, and Minoan) and pre-Roman art of Italic peoples, notably the Etruscans.