Glass mosaic bowl

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Opaque orange and opaque red. Slightly flaring vertical rim, with rounded edge; convex curving side; deeply indented base ring around slight convex bottom. Marbled mosaic pattern formed from polygonal sections of a single cane in orange with red streaks. On interior, a single horizontal groove below rim, another single groove around upward ridge of base ring, and on bottom a small raised circle around a central dot; on exterior, a band of two raised lines flanking a groove halfway down side, another raised line flanked by two grooves outside base ring, and another band of two raised lines flanking a groove on bottom. Broken and repaired with areas of fill in rim; dulling, some whitish weathering with green weathering of red streaks. The rich colors of the marbling decoration on this bowl may have been meant to imitate semiprecious stone, but it finds its closest parallel in pottery produced in southern Gaul in ca. A.D. 50.

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