Glass beaker

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent pale blue-green; trail in same color. Everted rim with rounded lip; cylindrical body with vertical side, then curving in sharply to solid pad base; concave bottom with pontil mark. Single horizontal trail wound once round upper body; side decorated with faint wavy ribs, becoming twenty-seven prominent ribs on side of base. Intact; many bubbles; slight pitting, enamel-like creamy brown weathering, and brilliant iridescence.

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