Glass mosaic bowl fragment

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Body fragment. Translucent blue, purple layered with white appearing opaque brick red, opaque yellow, white, and colorless. Sharply curving side. Body decorated with short-strip mosaic pattern formed from rectangular lengths of two canes set randomly or at right angles to one another: one in blue with white circle and central dot, the other in bands of blue streaked with white, red, yellow, white, and colorless. Exterior polished, with pitting of surface bubbles; dulling and creamy weathering on interior, and some iridescent weathering on edges.

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