Glass striped mosaic bowl fragment

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent cobalt blue, purple layered with colorless and appearing red, turquoise blue layered with yellow and appearing green; opaque yellow and white, and colorless. Shallow convex curving bottom. Quadripartite striped mosaic pattern formed from lengths of at least four different canes laid side by side in parallel rows: green, yellow, blue outlined in colorless, and red outlined in yellow; four sections laid at right angles around a central square cane in a colorless ground with a white spiral around a green ground and a central yellow spiral in a purple ground. Polished exterior; slight pitting of surface bubbles on exterior; dulling and iridescent weathering on interior and jagged 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