Glass gold-band mosaic fragment

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Body fragment. Translucent cobalt blue, honey brown, opaque white, yellow, and colorless enclosing gold leaf. Almost flat. Gold-band mosaic pattern formed from sections of layered canes in bands of blue, white, yellow over brown, and colorless glass in one row, and with a segment of colorless glass with gold leaf. A few pinprick bubbles; exterior polished, with pitting of surface bubbles; dulling and some brownish weathering on interior; one edge ground flat.

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