Glass flask decorated with intersecting circles

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent colorless with pale greenish tinge. Plain rounded rim; upper half of neck funnel-shaped, then cylindrical; horizontal shoulder, slightly pushed in on one side, above vertical collar; spherical body; slightly projecting solid edge to base with uneven concave bottom; no pontil mark. Body blown into a four-part mold of three vertical sections, extending to top of collar, joined to a shallow, disk-shaped base section. On body, sunken relief design of nine interlocking circles with a dot at the center of each circle, bordered above and below by a double row of smaller dots; on bottom, two faint raised circles around a small central knob. Intact; some bubbles; dulling, patchy weathering and iridescence. L. P. di Cesnola mistakenly identified this vase’s provenance as Idalion, Cyprus, and published it as such in his "Descriptive Atlas of the Cesnola Collection." This incorrect provenance was later repeated by Kisa 1908, Myres 1914, and Stern 1995.

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.

Metropolitan Museum of Art