Glass mosaic carinated bowl fragment

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Body fragment. Translucent purple, light blue appearing green, opaque white and yellow, and colorless. Part of two convex curves, the upper narrow and sharply curving, the lower deeper and tapering downward. Mosaic pattern formed from polygonal sections of three canes: one in a purple ground outlined in white with a circle of yellow rods; another in a blue ground with a yellow spiral, and a third in a colorless ground with a yellow spiral. All canes distorted. Polished interior; pitting of surface bubbles and some deep iridescent weathering on interior; dulling, thick black weathering, and some iridescence on exterior 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