
Glass network mosaic bowl fragment
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Rim fragment. Translucent blue, opaque white, and colorless. Applied coil rim with vertical, rounded lip; slightly convex curving side, tapering downward. Rim in blue with white spiral thread; body decorated with eleven colorless canes, slanting from top left to bottom right, decorated with various patterns of double spirally twisted white threads. Pinprick bubbles; exterior polished, with pitting of surface bubbles; dulling, iridescence, and creamy weathering on interior; jagged, weathered 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.