Glass striped mosaic bowl fragment

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Body fragment. Translucent blue, purple appearing opaque brick red, turquoise blue appearing green, yellow, and white, with colorless glass. Convex curving side. Striped mosaic pattern formed from lengths of different canes in regular, parallel bands: yellow, green, colorless with two overlapping spiral yellow threads, blue, red, blue, colorless with two overalapping spiral yellow threads, and green. Pinprick bubbles; exterior polished, with pitting of surface bubbles; pitting and creamy weathering on interior and jagged edges. This type of Roman mosaic glass combines stripes of translucent colored glass with canes of network glass.

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