Glass jar

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent olive green. Everted rim with beveled lip; funnel-shaped neck with irregular tooling marks in side; narrow, horizontal shoulder with projecting bulge around edge; bulbous body; pushed-in bottom with circular pontil mark at center. Body decorated with 22 vertical ribs, extending from bulge around top of body to bottom, made by dipping the paraison into a mold, then withdrawing it, and inflating. Intact; some pinprick and large bubbles, with a few glassy and black inclusions; patches of faint dulling and iridescent weathering. The extreme clarity and good state of preservation of the glass is unusual but is not totally unknown among Roman glass vessels.

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