Glass bowl

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Greenish colorless. Outsplayed, thick rim, with ground lip; globular body; thick, flat bottom. Wheel-cut decoration on exterior: below rim, two horizontal lines; on body, three horizontal bands of twenty-two vertical oval facets; on bottom, large round facet surrounded by a circle of six smaller round facets. Intact, except for one small weathered chip below rim; pinprick bubbles; dulling, pitting, faint weathering and iridescence, Glass to a large extent supplanted pottery as the principal medium for good quality tableware during the later imperial period, especially in the northwestern provinces. Many of the glass vessels were decorated with cut designs, some figural but others with detailed linear or facet patterns—as in the case of these three vessels, a dish, a bowl, and a flask that may have used as a wine carafe. All three were probably made locally in Cologne. [Group label] 81.10.46, .244, 17.194.317

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