Glass gold-band mosaic bowl fragment

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Rim fragment. Translucent cobalt blue, deep honey brown, turquoise green, opaque white, and colorless enclosing gold leaf. Applied vertical coil rim, with slightly rounded top edge; convex curving side tapering downward. Rim in blue with white spiral thread; body decorated with gold-band mosaic pattern formed from polygonal sections of serpentine layered canes in combinations of blue with white central line, brown with white central line, colorless glass with gold leaf, and green. Pinprick bubbles; exterior polished, with pitting of surface bubbles and joins between canes; 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