Glass jug with snake-thread decoration

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Colorless with pale green tinge; handle in same glass; trails in translucent light blue and opaque yellow. Funnel-shaped neck; broad, sloping shoulder; convex curving side, tapering downwards; outsplayed tubular base ring, made by folding; kick in bottom with central pontil scar; strap handle applied to shoulder, drawn up and outward in a gentle curve, then folded in, down, and back, and trailed onto top of rim. On body, two blue and two yellow partially serrated snake-thread trails in an alternating pattern of similar abstract curvilinear designs; on upper part of handle, a short yellow trail, tooled into horizontal ribs. Broken and repaired, with all of rim and most of neck missing, and several large holes in body; few bubbles, but many elongated bubbles and a few black impurities in handle; dulling, faint iridescence, and patches of brownish weathering.

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