Glass bowl with painted decoration

Glass bowl with painted decoration

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Colorless; gilding and red enamel paint. Ground vertical rim; side of body sloping in and rounded at bottom; flat bottom. Painted and gilded decoration on interior: building with a gabled roof and a porch supported by columns, flanked by trees; in the left foreground is a large Macedonian shield; on the right a large box (pyxis) with pointed lid. Broken and repaired with areas of fill; some pinprick bubbles; rotary grinding marks; black, enamel-like weathering and iridescence. On the interior of these bowls (2005.269.1-.2) are painted scenes in red and gold leaf, possibly also with other colors now indiscernible. Both scenes can be taken to represent sanctuaries, suggesting that the glass bowls may have been made as ritual offerings.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Glass bowl with painted decorationGlass bowl with painted decorationGlass bowl with painted decorationGlass bowl with painted decorationGlass bowl with painted decoration

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.