Glass short-strip mosaic fragment

Glass short-strip mosaic fragment

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Thin-walled body fragment. Translucent purple, cobalt blue, turquoise blue layered with opaque yellow and appearing green, opaque white, yellow, and brick red. Shallow convex curving side. Short-strip mosaic pattern formed from lengths of striped canes in bands of white, blue, yellow, and green, combined with polygonal sections of a cane in a purple ground outlined in white with a ring of white dots around a central hollow red circle. Polished exterior; slight pitting of surface bubbles on exterior; dulling and iridescent weathering on interior and all but one edge.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.