Gold-glass skyphos (drinking cup) fragment
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Colorless with yellowish tinge, with gold foil and blue enamel. Vertical rim, with top edge ground flat; slightly convex curving side, comprised of two layers of glass fused together, both becoming thinner towards the bottom. Decoration applied between the two layers of glass on side in three registers: at top, pattern of close-set squared crenallations; in the middle, a broad frieze flanked above and below by single horizontal lines, depicting a scrolling vine with grape clusters painted in blue and flanked to one side by a uncertain object (a cushion ?) with three dots in field above and below and beside it another cluster of fruit; at the bottom, a delicate dog-tooth pattern flanked above and below by single horizontal lines. Broken and repaired from three pieces, with jagged edges at sides and bottom; pinprick bubbles; dulling, slight pitting, and faint iridescence. Some luxury Hellenistic glass tableware was made using a technique known as sandwich gold-glass. A design of openwork gold leaf was applied between two separately-made vessels, usually of colorless glass, that were fused together, one inside the other. On this rim fragment the principle band of decoration comprises a vine scroll with clusters of blue-colored grapes.
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.