Mosaic glass inlay

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Opaque white ground; decoration in opaque white, yellow, and blue, partly translucent purple and blue green, and colorless glass appearing blue. Thin, rectangular plaque, cut from a mosaic composite bar, with flat upper and lower faces, and vertical straight sides, with rounded corners; design extends uniformly through the thickness of the plaque. Front half of crocodile, facing left; front leg in blue; underside of body and jaw in small blue green canes outlined with colorless glass, and bottom of jaw outlined in purple; teeth in white; upper body in purple with yellow scales. Broken across one end, with rear half of crocodile missing, and some chips along top edge; all surfaces ground and polished; pitting of surface bubbles.

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