Glass mosaic fragment

Glass mosaic fragment

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Thick-walled fragment. Translucent cobalt blue, purple, and turquoise blue layered with opaque yellow and appearing green, opaque white and yellow, and colorless. Shallow curving side or bottom, with convex curving exterior and rounded edges. Short-strip mosaic pattern formed from sections and lengths of three canes: one in a purple ground with a white spiral; a second in colorless and blue bands, and the third in green, yellow, and colorless stripes. Polished exterior; pitting of surface bubbles on exterior and rounded upper edges; dulling, pitting, and creamy weathering on interior and lower parts of edges. Perhaps cut down in antiquity for use as an inlay.

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.