Glass cameo fragment

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent deep honey brown with opaque turquoise green overlay. Flat underside; top surface with shallow relief decoration. In relief in green, naked youthful satyr, facing right with head in profile, torso and legs in three-quarter view, and proper right arm raised behind him; torso rendered with musculature in fine detail; on his head, above his pointed proper right ear, is what appears to be a leaf or wing, picked out by differential weathering. Broken on all sides with weathered edges; dulling, slight pitting, patches of weathering and brilliant iridescence on back. The fragment comes from a flat panel of glass, probably a plaque rather than a vessel. The honey brown ground and opaque turquoise overlay are an unusual combination for Roman cameo glass.

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