Glass jar with marvered trails

Glass jar with marvered trails

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent purple; trails in opaque brownish red and white. Thick, outsplayed rim, with slightly beveled edge; funnel-shaped neck; pushed-in shoulder; globular body; kick in bottom, with traces of pontil pad. Two marvered trails wound in a spiral from rim to bottom; on body and neck, tooled into hanging festoons with seventeen upward tooling strokes; around bottom, tooled downward, forming a very confused pattern. Intact; pinprick bubbles on surface; thick creamy brown weathering and iridescence covering most of body with areas of pitting and dulling on exterior.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Glass jar with marvered trailsGlass jar with marvered trailsGlass jar with marvered trailsGlass jar with marvered trailsGlass jar with marvered trails

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.