Gold Glass
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Gold glass or gold sandwich glass is a luxury form of
glass Glass is an amorphous (non-crystalline solid, non-crystalline) solid. Because it is often transparency and translucency, transparent and chemically inert, glass has found widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in window pane ...
where a decorative design in
gold leaf upA gold nugget of 5 mm (0.2 in) in diameter (bottom) can be expanded through hammering into a gold foil of about 0.5 m2 (5.4 sq ft). The Japan.html" ;"title="Toi gold mine museum, Japan">Toi gold mine museum, Japan. Gold leaf is gold that has ...
is fused between two layers of glass. First found in Hellenistic Greece, it is especially characteristic of the
Roman glass Roman glass objects have been recovered across the Roman Empire in domestic, industrial and funerary contexts. Glass was used primarily for the production of vessels, although mosaic tiles and window glass were also produced. Roman glass producti ...
of the Late Empire in the 3rd and 4th century AD, where the gold decorated roundels of cups and other vessels were often cut out of the piece they had originally decorated and cemented to the walls of the
catacombs of Rome The Catacombs of Rome () are ancient catacombs, underground burial places in and around Rome, of which there are at least forty, some rediscovered since 1578, others even as late as the 1950s. There are more than fifty catacombs in the underg ...
as grave markers for the small recesses where bodies were buried. About 500 pieces of gold glass used in this way have been recovered. Complete vessels are far rarer. Many show religious imagery from Christianity, traditional Greco-Roman religion and its various cultic developments, and in a few examples Judaism. Others show portraits of their owners, and the finest are "among the most vivid portraits to survive from Early Christian times. They stare out at us with an extraordinary stern and melancholy intensity". From the 1st century AD the technique was also used for the gold colour in
mosaic A mosaic () is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/Mortar (masonry), mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and ...
s. Various different techniques may sometimes also be described as "gold glass". Zwischengoldglas is very similar but the two layers of glass are cemented, not fused. It mostly comes from Germany and
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from the 18th and 19th centuries. Verre églomisé properly covers a single layer of glass which is gilded (or coated with other types of metal leaf) on the back, as used in 19th century shop signs and the like. One process was revived by Jean-Baptise Glomy (1711–1786), hence the name. Both of these processes were also used in ancient times, and the German and French languages often use their native terms for what is called "gold glass" in English. Gold ruby glass or "cranberry glass" is actually red, coloured by the addition of gold oxide. Gold-band glass is another ancient technique covered below.


Technique

The manufacturing process for gold glass was difficult and required great skill. For a Late Roman glass, first a small round flat disc, typically about three to five inches across, was cut away from a blown sphere with a flattened bottom, either made of coloured or plain glass. A piece of gold leaf was then glued to this with
gum arabic Gum arabic (gum acacia, gum sudani, Senegal gum and by other names) () is a tree gum exuded by two species of '' Acacia sensu lato:'' '' Senegalia senegal,'' and '' Vachellia seyal.'' However, the term "gum arabic" does not indicate a partic ...
. The design was created by scraping away gold leaf. The main vessel, a cup or bowl, was formed by blowing and cutting, with a flat bottom the same size as the first disc. This was then heated again and carefully lowered onto the disc with the design, superimposing the flat bottom with the disc with the design so that they fused together. The complete vessel was then heated a final time to complete the fusing. Different accounts of different periods vary somewhat as to the precise sequence of stages and other details, but the process is essentially the same. The larger Hellenistic glass bowls are thought to have been formed using moulding rather than blown, as the whole bowl is doubled and the inner and outer vessels must fit together exactly. Some of the finer later medallions seem to have been made as such from the start, and some contain pigments other than the gold. These smoother-edged medallions exploited the medium of glass as a matrix for
portrait miniature A portrait miniature is a miniature portrait painting from Renaissance art, usually executed in gouache, Watercolor painting, watercolor, or Vitreous enamel, enamel. Portrait miniatures developed out of the techniques of the miniatures in illumin ...
s, and it has proved to be a very effective one, outlasting all alternatives except for precious metal and
engraved gem An engraved gem, frequently referred to as an intaglio, is a small and usually semi-precious gemstone that has been carved, in the Western tradition normally with images or inscriptions only on one face. The engraving of gemstones was a major lux ...
s. They were probably initially made to be hung for display, or set in jewellery in smaller examples like that of Gennadios, but were also used for funerary purposes, and often use a base of blue glass. They are a few Roman examples of vessels from Cologne of a different style where several of what have been called "sidewall blobs", small gold glass medallions about 2–3 cm across, with images, are fused into the walls of a vessel. Apart from roundels with figurative images the fused sandwich technique was used to create the tesserae for gold in
mosaic A mosaic () is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/Mortar (masonry), mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and ...
s, and for beads and the like. Gold glass tesserae, at least by Byzantine times, had a very thin top layer of glass, which was probably poured onto the lower glass with the gold leaf glued to it. Tesserae were made in blocks or "cakes" and then cut into cubes, which are relatively large in the case of gold backgrounds. Gold backgrounds were laid over earth red or
yellow ochre Ochre ( ; , ), iron ochre, or ocher in American English, is a natural clay earth pigment, a mixture of ferric oxide and varying amounts of clay and sand. It ranges in colour from yellow to deep orange or brown. It is also the name of the col ...
backgrounds which enhanced their visual effect. Most colours of tesserae seem to have been made locally to the mosaic, but there is some discussion as to whether this was true for gold glass ones. In the 11th century the relatively new Christian centre of
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seems to have used gold tesserae made in
Constantinople Constantinople (#Names of Constantinople, see other names) was a historical city located on the Bosporus that served as the capital of the Roman Empire, Roman, Byzantine Empire, Byzantine, Latin Empire, Latin, and Ottoman Empire, Ottoman empire ...
. Roman gold glass beads were made by using an inner tube or rod to which the gold leaf was stuck. A larger tube was slid over that and the beads crimped off. Easily transported and very attractive, Roman gold glass beads have been found as far outside the Empire as the Wari-Bateshwar ruins in
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, and sites in China,
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,
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and
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. Gold-band glass is a related Hellenistic and Roman technique, where strips of gold leaf, sandwiched between colourless glass, are used as part of the marbling effect in onyx glass. It is mostly found in small perfume bottles and the like.


Grave-markers

The most common form of vessel in late Roman examples was a bowl or drinking cup, which are thought to have been originally family gifts for weddings, anniversaries, New Year, the various religious festivals and the like, in some cases perhaps presented at birth or Christian baptism. None of the type of gold glass vessels cut down as grave-markers has survived complete, though about 500 of the cut-off bottoms are known, but since so many have inscriptions encouraging the owner to drink, they are usually referred to as "cups" or "glasses". However Roman drinking cups and glasses were often very wide and shallow, though tall straight-sided or slightly flared shapes like modern tumblers are also found. A mosaic in the North African ruins of Dougga shows two hefty slaves pouring wine from ''
amphorae An amphora (; ; English ) is a type of container with a pointed bottom and characteristic shape and size which fit tightly (and therefore safely) against each other in storage rooms and packages, tied together with rope and delivered by land ...
'' into two shallow bowls held by slaves waiting on the banquet. The two ''amphorae'' are inscribed with "ΠΙΕ" and "ΣΗϹΗϹ" the Greek originals of the toasting formulae "" ("Drink, may you live", discussed below) so common on Roman glasses, and it has been suggested that the mosaic shows the shape a complete cup would have had. At what was probably a much later date, perhaps after decades of use, on the death of the owner the main vessel of undecorated glass was cut away and trimmed to leave only the gold glass roundel, which was then used in the catacombs as a grave marker. Presumably in many cases the cup had already broken in the normal course of use, and the thick bottom with the decoration had been preserved for later use in this way. Bodies were buried in the catacombs in small recesses called ''loculi'', stacked one above another mostly along narrow corridors hollowed out from the soft rock, and no doubt some form of marker was necessary for visitors to locate the right spot. They may also have functioned as a seal on the grave, as they were pressed into the mortar or
stucco Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and ...
forming the final surface of the wall of the ''loculus''; other classes of small decorative objects were also used in the same way. They may also have been regarded as capable of warding off evil spirits, especially in the later part of the period, when portraits of saints become most common. The very untidy trimming of many examples may be explained by this; an example in the
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is still attached to a chunk of mortar round much of its edge, showing that the mortar overlapped the edge of the glass. Rough edges would mostly have been hidden by the mortar and also provided a firmer key for the mortar to hold the glass in place (as it happens the edges of the New York piece are unusually neatly trimmed). Many pieces of gold glass had portraits of private individuals, mostly married couples, who may have included the deceased, while others had portraits of religious figures such as saints, or religious symbols. This custom was followed by Christian, Jewish (13 identifiably Jewish examples are known) and pagan Romans. The different sets of imagery, apart from the increased number of private portraits, are typical of the paintings also found in the catacombs and other Early Christian art and its Jewish equivalent from the period. As Christian art developed in the late 4th and 5th centuries, its changes are reflected in the subjects and their treatment in gold glass, before the catacombs ceased to be used and the supply of examples ends.


Hellenistic period

The technique was used in
Hellenistic In classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Greek history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC, which was followed by the ascendancy of the R ...
times, and Hellenistic examples are generally both more technically ambitious than Roman ones, with wide bowls or drinking cups decorated all round their curved sides in gold glass, and executed with more artistry. The
British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...
has a virtually complete bowl (broken but repaired) 19.3 cm wide and 11.4 cm high, one of two from a tomb in Canosa in
Apulia Apulia ( ), also known by its Italian language, Italian name Puglia (), is a Regions of Italy, region of Italy, located in the Southern Italy, southern peninsular section of the country, bordering the Adriatic Sea to the east, the Strait of Ot ...
dating to around 270–160 BC. It has most of the interior very finely decorated with lotus and acanthus motifs, which are more typical of gold glass in this period than designs with human figures. There are a handful of other near complete examples, and rather more fragments.Rotroff, 333 These pieces are usually assigned to
Alexandria Alexandria ( ; ) is the List of cities and towns in Egypt#Largest cities, second largest city in Egypt and the List of coastal settlements of the Mediterranean Sea, largest city on the Mediterranean coast. It lies at the western edge of the Nile ...
in Egypt, which is often seen as the originating centre for luxury Hellenistic glass, and is mentioned as the source of over-elaborate glass by the 1st century
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Martial Marcus Valerius Martialis (known in English as Martial ; March, between 38 and 41 AD – between 102 and 104 AD) was a Roman and Celtiberian poet born in Bilbilis, Hispania (modern Spain) best known for his twelve books of '' Epigrams'', pu ...
and other sources; one seems to show a
Nilotic The Nilotic peoples are peoples Indigenous people of Africa, indigenous to South Sudan and the Nile Valley who speak Nilotic languages. They inhabit South Sudan and the Gambela Region of Ethiopia, while also being a large minority in Kenya, Uga ...
landscape, though this was a popular subject elsewhere. However fragments have been found when excavating a glass factory on
Rhodes Rhodes (; ) is the largest of the Dodecanese islands of Greece and is their historical capital; it is the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, ninth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Administratively, the island forms a separ ...
. A description perhaps dating from the 270s BC (surviving in the works of the later writer
Athenaeus Athenaeus of Naucratis (, or Nαυκράτιος, ''Athēnaios Naukratitēs'' or ''Naukratios''; ) was an ancient Greek rhetorician and Grammarian (Greco-Roman), grammarian, flourishing about the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd century ...
) mentions two vessels that are ''diachysa'' ("with gold in it") and very likely made by this technique.


Roman period

Gold glass mosaic tesserae begin to be used in domestic mosaics in the 1st century AD, with Rome apparently the first location. They continued to be used throughout the ancient and medieval periods into the modern day. By around 400 gold began to be used as the background colour for Christian religious mosaics, as it was throughout the Byzantine period. The decorated late Roman pieces are usually assumed to have been made in and around Rome, especially in the case of portraits of residents there, but also in the
Rhineland The Rhineland ( ; ; ; ) is a loosely defined area of Western Germany along the Rhine, chiefly Middle Rhine, its middle section. It is the main industrial heartland of Germany because of its many factories, and it has historic ties to the Holy ...
around
Cologne Cologne ( ; ; ) is the largest city of the States of Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city pr ...
and Augusta Treverorum, modern
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, which was a centre for other luxury glass products like cage cups. Alexandria is still thought to have been a major centre, and from linguistic analysis of the inscriptions it has been suggested that the technique, and perhaps the actual artists and craftsmen, reached Rome and Germany from there. Yet it may just be a coincidence of survival that the other large body of "middle-class" portraiture from the period is the Fayum mummy portraits from Egypt. Apart from the Rhineland finds discussed below, small numbers of cut-off vessel bases have been found in northern Italy and modern
Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...
and
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. The Gennadios medallion in New York, illustrated above, is a fine example of an Alexandrian portrait on blue glass, using a rather more complex technique and naturalistic style than most Roman examples, including painting onto the gold to create shading, and with the Greek inscription showing local
dialect A dialect is a Variety (linguistics), variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. This may include dominant and standard language, standardized varieties as well as Vernacular language, vernacular, unwritten, or non-standardize ...
features. He had perhaps been given or commissioned the piece to celebrate victory in a musical competition. One of the most famous Alexandrian-style portrait medallions, with an inscription in Egyptian Greek, was later mounted in an
Early Medieval The Early Middle Ages (or early medieval period), sometimes controversially referred to as the Dark Ages, is typically regarded by historians as lasting from the late 5th to the 10th century. They marked the start of the Middle Ages of Europ ...
in
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, in the mistaken belief that it showed the pious empress and Gothic queen Galla Placida (died 450) and her children; in fact the knot in the central figure's dress may mark a devotee of
Isis Isis was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Isis was first mentioned in the Old Kingdom () as one of the main characters of the Osiris myth, in which she resurrects her sla ...
. The portrait in the Brescia medallion also shares clear stylistic features with the Fayum mummy portraits of
Roman Egypt Roman Egypt was an imperial province of the Roman Empire from 30 BC to AD 642. The province encompassed most of modern-day Egypt except for the Sinai. It was bordered by the provinces of Crete and Cyrenaica to the west and Judaea, ...
, in addition to a Greek inscription in the
Alexandria Alexandria ( ; ) is the List of cities and towns in Egypt#Largest cities, second largest city in Egypt and the List of coastal settlements of the Mediterranean Sea, largest city on the Mediterranean coast. It lies at the western edge of the Nile ...
n dialect of Egypt. This is one of a group of 14 pieces dating to the 3rd century AD, all individualized secular portraits of high quality. Yet Jás Elsner (2007) contends that the Brescia medallion, likely depicting a family from Alexandria since the inscription is in the Alexandrian dialect of Greek, has a range of possible dates ranging from the early-3rd to mid-5th century AD, before it found its way to Italy where it adorned a 7th-century
Christian cross The Christian cross, seen as representing the crucifixion of Jesus, is a religious symbol, symbol of Christianity. It is related to the crucifix, a cross that includes a ''corpus'' (a representation of Jesus' body, usually three-dimensional) a ...
.Jás Elsner (2007). "The Changing Nature of Roman Art and the Art Historical Problem of Style," in Eva R. Hoffman (ed), ''Late Antique and Medieval Art of the Medieval World'', 11–18. Oxford, Malden & Carlton: Blackwell Publishing. , p. 17, Figure 1.3 on p. 18. It is thought that the tiny detail of pieces such as these can only have been achieved using
lens A lens is a transmissive optical device that focuses or disperses a light beam by means of refraction. A simple lens consists of a single piece of transparent material, while a compound lens consists of several simple lenses (''elements'') ...
es. Where the refined "Alexandrian" medallions, wherever they were actually produced, mostly have a simple thin gold line framing the subject, the Roman examples have a variety of heavier frames, often using two round borders, the style of which forms part of efforts to group them by workshop. The level of portraiture is rudimentary, with features, hairstyles and clothes all following stereotypical styles. An "Alexander plate with hunting scene" in the
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is, if genuine, a very rare example of a complete vessel decorated with gold glass, and comes from the upper elite of Roman society. It is a shallow bowl or plate 25.7 cm (10 1/8 inches) in diameter and 4.5 cm (1 3/4 inches) high. The decorated flat roundel in the centre takes about two thirds of the whole diameter. It shows a mounted huntsman with a spear pursuing two elk, while beneath his horse a huntsman on foot with a hound on a leash confronts a
wild boar The wild boar (''Sus scrofa''), also known as the wild swine, common wild pig, Eurasian wild pig, or simply wild pig, is a Suidae, suid native to much of Eurasia and North Africa, and has been introduced to the Americas and Oceania. The speci ...
. The Latin inscription "" means "Alexander fortunate man, drink, may you live, together with yours". The identity of "Alexander" has been the subject of discussion, but he is on the whole thought to be an unknown aristocrat rather than
Alexander the Great Alexander III of Macedon (; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), most commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the Ancient Greece, ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia (ancient kingdom), Macedon. He succeeded his father Philip ...
or the Emperor
Alexander Severus Marcus Aurelius Severus Alexander (1 October 208 – March 235), also known as Alexander Severus, was Roman emperor from 222 until 235. He was the last emperor from the Severan dynasty. Alexander took power in 222, when he succeeded his slain co ...
(reigned 232–235). The dish is perhaps slightly later than his reign and at least during his reign he could never be addressed as merely a "man". The Greek drinking toast ZHCAIC given in Latin letters as ZESES, meaning "live!" or "may you live", is a very common part of inscriptions on gold glass, and sometimes the only inscription. It is more common than the Latin equivalent VIVAS, probably because it was considered more refined, somewhat like the modern "bon appétit" used in English. Two glasses including images of Jesus "misspell" "ZESES" as "ZESUS", managing to achieve wordplay between a drinking toast and the name of the Christian saviour. Such secular "blessings" are typical, and on roundels made from cups they often urge the owner to drink, even when the
iconography Iconography, as a branch of art history, studies the identification, description and interpretation of the content of images: the subjects depicted, the particular compositions and details used to do so, and other elements that are distinct fro ...
is religious. One Jewish example has the usual array of symbols and the inscription "Drink, oyou may live, Elares". The Wedding at Cana is a popular Christian subject, with one example inscribed "Worthy of your friends, may you live in the peace of God, drink". Another popular phrase is DIGNITAS AMICORUM or " ou arethe honour of your friends". The majority of inscriptions are made up of either names or such conventional expressions, or the two combined. An example inscribed "DIGNITAS AMICORVM PIE ZESES VIVAS" typifies the tendency to pile together the common phrases. The convivial dedications found on so many examples are paralleled by several of the far more luxurious cage cups or ''diatreta''. One round bottom from a larger bowl found in the catacombs is 10.8 cm across, and now in the
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in
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. It has five abbreviated scenes from the Old and New Testaments surrounding a married couple in a roundel, with the feet of the outer figures to the centre. A large and complex bowl from Cologne was decorated all over with Christian scenes and Imperial portraits, but presumably because of its size (height 8.6, diameter 11.4 cm) no second layer of glass was fused on, so the gold has now all been lost, though the shapes of the design can be seen. The portraits of the sons of
Constantine I Constantine I (27 February 27222 May 337), also known as Constantine the Great, was a Roman emperor from AD 306 to 337 and the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. He played a Constantine the Great and Christianity, pivotal ro ...
allow an unusually precise probable dating to 326, his , or the 25th anniversary of his reign. Another complete piece is a
paten A paten or diskos is a small plate used for the celebration of the Eucharist (as in a mass). It is generally used during the liturgy itself, while the reserved sacrament are stored in the tabernacle in a ciborium. Western usage In many Wes ...
from the Basilica of St. Severin, Cologne, founded in the 4th century. This is decorated with roundels containing
Old Testament The Old Testament (OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Isr ...
scenes and floral motifs. According to the ''
Liber Pontificalis The ''Liber Pontificalis'' (Latin for 'pontifical book' or ''Book of the Popes'') is a book of biography, biographies of popes from Saint Peter until the 15th century. The original publication of the ''Liber Pontificalis'' stopped with Pope Adr ...
'',
Pope Zephyrinus Pope Zephyrinus was the bishop of Rome from the year 199 until his death on 20 December 217. He was born in Rome, and succeeded Victor I. Upon his death on 20 December 217, he was succeeded by his principal advisor, Callixtus I. He is known fo ...
, in office from 199 to 217, had approved the use of glass patens, and ones in other glass techniques survive. A variant technique is only known from vessels from Cologne with what have been called "sidewall blobs", where small gold glass medallions with images are fused into the walls of a vessel; one of the few examples was found in the cemetery of St Severin.


Iconography of the vessel bottoms

Almost all the Roman vessel bottoms have imagery of some sort, and around 240 have legible inscriptions as well. Of these, about half of the total number of gold glasses known, portraits are most common, but there are small narrative scenes, mainly Christian but a few pagan. Portraits of Christian sacred figures are on about half the full corpus. There are a small number of depictions of sports, animals, wreaths and the like, and a single example with a central image of a plant. No Imperial portraits are recorded, nor military scenes; unlike so much Roman public art the glasses concentrate on the private interests of individuals. Apart from a single near-naked
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and some figures of erotes, sexual themes are another notable absence compared to much Roman art. Most glasses feature a single image occupying most of the round space within the border, but some have a number of small scenes, usually arranged in small circular frames around a central image. Most portraits are between bust and half-length. The small number of glasses with Jewish iconography are covered separately below. Either portraits or inscriptions naming private individuals are very common, though other examples have no personalizing aspect and were perhaps just bought from a dealer's stock. Portraits of married couples are at first most common, but saints were more numerous towards the end of the period; the two are also often combined. It is not always possible to distinguish the two confidently, despite '' tituli'' inscriptions and a convention of using contemporary dress for owners and a conventional out of date costume for sacred figures, even recent male ones such as
Pope Damasus I Pope Damasus I (; c. 305 – 11 December 384), also known as Damasus of Rome, was the bishop of Rome from October 366 to his death in 384. It is claimed that he presided over the Council of Rome of 382 that determined the canon or official list ...
(r. 366–384). Damasus, exceptionally for a contemporary cleric, appears on at least four glasses, or at least it is thought he is who "DAMAS" refers to. Saints Peter and Paul together are very common, usually facing each other in profile, but sometimes with other figures. Both were martyred in Rome, and especially popular there; other local martyrs such as Agnes are depicted several times, and according to Lucy Grig "the ''Roman-ness'' of the saints portrayed on the Roman glasses is striking", and five popes from the 3rd and 4th centuries are probably depicted. Christ is shown in a number of examples, usually as clean-shaven and youthful, as well as figures such as the
Good Shepherd The Good Shepherd (, ''poimḗn ho kalós'') is an image used in the pericope of , in which Jesus in Christianity, Jesus Christ is depicted as the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep. Similar imagery is used in Psalm 23 and Ezeki ...
which may symbolize him, or in some cases
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or general bucolic imagery. A small Christ may stand between the heads of a married couple, blessing them. Orants perhaps representing the soul of an owner when not identified as a saint, and as in the catacombs always shown as female, appear a number of times, and female saints and the Virgin are always shown in the orant pose. Narrative scenes from the Old Testament are more common than miracles of Christ, as in the catacomb paintings, and the same "abbreviated representations" of scenes of deliverance feature: the story of
Jonah Jonah the son of Amittai or Jonas ( , ) is a Jewish prophet from Gath-hepher in the Northern Kingdom of Israel around the 8th century BCE according to the Hebrew Bible. He is the central figure of the Book of Jonah, one of the minor proph ...
, Daniel in the lions' den, the three youths in the Fiery Furnace. The most common scenes in later Christian art, centred around the liturgical calendar, are very rare. There are really only two non-Christian narrative scenes: one labour of Hercules (two more are shown in "sidewall blobs"), and one of
Achilles In Greek mythology, Achilles ( ) or Achilleus () was a hero of the Trojan War who was known as being the greatest of all the Greek warriors. The central character in Homer's ''Iliad'', he was the son of the Nereids, Nereid Thetis and Peleus, ...
, but a number of "portrait" figures, as with Christian sacred figures often combined with owners. There are a small number of "agonistic" or sporting scenes, with wrestlers, boxers, one gladiator, and several racing chariot teams. Several of these, like others seeming to represent victory in a musical or dramatic context, feature palms and crowns and may well have been presented to celebrate victory in these fields in some amateur or professional setting, like the Alexandrian Gennadios portrait. Two identical glasses featuring two boxers with a trainer, all named, suggest that the glasses may sometimes have been ordered in sets; one may speculate that this may have been common. Single examples show
Athena Athena or Athene, often given the epithet Pallas, is an ancient Greek religion, ancient Greek goddess associated with wisdom, warfare, and handicraft who was later syncretism, syncretized with the Roman goddess Minerva. Athena was regarde ...
presiding over shipbuilders, a pair of personifications of Rome and Constantinople, and female figures representing the '' monetae'' or mints, which are often shown on coins. A number have animals that may carry symbolic meaning, or objects such as scrolls or wreaths. The short inscriptions tend to be similar regardless of the content of the image, with names and the "convivial formulae" described above together or separately predominating. A religious implication (as may be intended in ''vivas'' or for example) is relatively rarely explicitly stated. The names are in the single ''
cognomen A ''cognomen'' (; : ''cognomina''; from ''co-'' "together with" and ''(g)nomen'' "name") was the third name of a citizen of ancient Rome, under Roman naming conventions. Initially, it was a nickname, but lost that purpose when it became hereditar ...
'' form which is hard to relate to such records as survive, but three glasses can possibly be related to known individuals who were potential owners, and one to a family (that of the poet
Ausonius Decimius Magnus Ausonius (; ) was a Latin literature, Roman poet and Education in ancient Rome, teacher of classical rhetoric, rhetoric from Burdigala, Gallia Aquitania, Aquitaine (now Bordeaux, France). For a time, he was tutor to the future E ...
). These persons are rather grand, and one might think belonged to the classes buried in
sarcophagi A sarcophagus (: sarcophagi or sarcophaguses) is a coffin, most commonly carved in stone, and usually displayed above ground, though it may also be buried. The word ''sarcophagus'' comes from the Greek σάρξ ' meaning "flesh", and φ ...
rather than ''loculi''; the glasses perhaps belonged to ''"amici"'', clients or dependents, or had passed as gifts or legacies by the subjects. One glass in the British Museum is unusual in a number of respects: between a named couple is a smaller figure of Hercules, and the inscription: "ORFITVS ET CONSTANTIA IN NOMINE HERCVLlS ACERENTINO FELICES BIBATIS" or "Orfitus and Constantia, may you live/drink in happiness in the name of Hercules of Acerentia". This may well represent Memmius Vitruvius Orfitus, prefect of Rome, and his wife. Acerentia in southern Italy had a local cult of Hercules. For some historians Orfitus was "notorious as the propaganda mastermind of the 'pagan revival'" of his day.


Jewish glasses

Only 13 of the more than 500 known Late Roman vessel bottoms are identifiably Jewish, but these have still been said to represent "the most appealing group of Jewish realia that have come down from antiquity". They are all presumed to have been used in the Roman catacombs as grave-markers, though as with the examples identifiable with other religions, the exact find spot and context of the great majority is unrecorded. Rather surprisingly, the only two of the 13 with full histories were found in Christian catacombs, whereas the only gold glass remains found in Jewish catacombs have no Jewish iconography, and show that "some Jews felt no qualm in using gold glasses with pagan iconographical motifs". Identifiably Jewish roundels do not feature portraits but with one exception have a fairly standard array of religious symbols. The most common arrangement is on two levels, with two Lions of Judah flanking a
Torah ark A Torah ark (also known as the ''hekhal'', , or ''aron qodesh'', ) is an ornamental chamber in the synagogue that houses the Torah scrolls. History The ark is also known as the ''ark of law'', or in Hebrew the ''Aron Kodesh'' () or ''aron ha-Kod ...
above, and below two menarot, a shofar (rams horn),
etrog Etrog (, plural: ; Ashkenazi Hebrew: , plural: ) is the yellow citron (''Citrus medica'') used by Jews during the weeklong holiday of Sukkot as one of the four species. Together with the ''lulav'', ''hadass'', and ''Aravah (Sukkot), aravah'', th ...
, lulav and perhaps others of the four Species, scrolls and vases. Not all the tiny symbols can be confidently identified. Alternatively, the objects are all in the top tier, above a banqueting scene. The single exception to such compositions has what is thought to be a representation of the Temple of Jerusalem, perhaps representing the feast of
Purim Purim (; , ) is a Jewish holidays, Jewish holiday that commemorates the saving of the Jews, Jewish people from Genocide, annihilation at the hands of an official of the Achaemenid Empire named Haman, as it is recounted in the Book of Esther (u ...
. Most scholars are confident that Jewish customers used the same workshops as those of the other religions, who presumably kept patterns for designs for all religions, or were provided with sketches. Some of the attempts to group glasses by workshop attribute Jewish glasses and those of other religions to the same workshop. Apart from the use of symbols rather than human figures, the Jewish glasses seem to have been used in very much the same way as those from other religious groups, which is also characteristic of other classes of Jewish artefacts from Rome at this time, where the Jewish community adopted many aspects of the general Roman way of life. Of the 13 known, five have inscriptions including the phrase "" (see above) and two "''anima dulcis''" (literally "sweet soul", equating to "sweetheart"), both very common phrases in Christian and pagan inscriptions. The rarer phrase "''vivas cum ...''" ("live with ...") is also found on Jewish and non-Jewish glasses. They would seem to have been given as gifts on the same sort of occasions, and there is evidence that Roman Jews shared the general Roman custom of New Year present-giving.


Later uses and collections

The technique continued to be used for mosaic tesserae, and at times for pieces that remained relatively large, for example in a small tile in New York with a pattern forming a cross, perhaps from a
Syria Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to Syria–Turkey border, the north, Iraq to Iraq–Syria border, t ...
n church of the 9th to 12th centuries. A small group of Islamic vessels are decorated with mostly simplified vegetal motifs and probably date to the 10th century from
Syria Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to Syria–Turkey border, the north, Iraq to Iraq–Syria border, t ...
; the most complete ones are decorated over a large curved area and must have been made by using a "double vessel" method. In both respects these are closer to the Hellenistic vessels than most Roman ones. From at least the 17th century, the Roman glasses attracted
antiquarian An antiquarian or antiquary () is an aficionado or student of antiquities or things of the past. More specifically, the term is used for those who study history with particular attention to ancient artefacts, archaeological and historic si ...
interest and they began to be removed from the catacombs, in a largely disorganized and unrecorded fashion; now only a "handful" remain in their original position in the catacomb walls. The first significant publication on them was by Filippo Buonarroti in 1716, ''Osservazioni sopra alcuni frammenti di vasi antichi di vetro ornate di figure trovati nei cimiteri di Roma'' ("Observations on some fragments of antique glass vases decorated with figures, found in the cemeteries of Rome"), in which he made the extraordinary, almost proto-Romantic assertion that the aesthetic crudity of early Christian art, often remarked by connoisseurs of Roman arts, had served to intensify the piety of the worshipper, an early expression of feeling for primitive art. After other studies, the Italian
Jesuit The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...
Raffaele Garrucci published the first illustrated survey in 1858, with an expanded second edition in 1864. In the 19th century a number of imitations, copies and downright forgeries of Roman pieces were made, mostly in Murano off
Venice Venice ( ; ; , formerly ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 islands that are separated by expanses of open water and by canals; portions of the city are li ...
, by firms such as Salviati. The first major public exhibition of these seems to have been at the Exposition Universelle of 1878 in Paris, by Italian firms. A number of museums around the world have examples of Roman vessel bottoms. The largest collection is in the
Vatican Museums The Vatican Museums (; ) are the public museums of the Vatican City. They display works from the immense collection amassed by the Catholic Church and the papacy throughout the centuries, including several of the best-known Roman sculptures and ...
, with the 60 pieces of Late Antique glass in the British Museum the second largest. A research project on their collection was due to finish in 2010 (see further reading below). The Wilshere Collection in the Ashmolean is the third largest, with some 34 pieces. The
Corning Museum of Glass The Corning Museum of Glass is a museum in Corning (city), New York, Corning, New York, United States, dedicated to the art, history, and science of glass. It was founded in 1951 by Corning Incorporated, Corning Glass Works and currently has a ...
has 18 examples and the Metropolitan Museum in New York nearly as many. The most recent of many catalogues since the 18th century are by C.R. Morey in 1959, with 460 Roman vessel bases, against 426 in S. Smith's thesis of 2000. The corpus continues to be expanded by occasional new finds.Lutraan, 7–10


Notes


References

*Beckwith, John, ''Early Christian and Byzantine Art'', Penguin History of Art (now Yale), 2nd edn. 1979, * Boardman, John ed., ''The Oxford History of Classical Art'', 1993, OUP, *Conventi, A et al., "SEM-EDS analysis of ancient gold leaf glass mosaic tesserae. A contribution to the dating of the materials", OP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering Volume 32 conference 1, 2012, A Conventi, E Neri, and M Verità. IOP Conf. Ser.: Mater. Sci. Eng. 32 012007 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/32/1/012007
paper online
*Cormack, Robin, in ''The Oxford handbook of Byzantine studies'', 2008, Editors Elizabeth M. Jeffreys, John F. Haldon, Robin Cormack; Oxford University Press, , 9780199252466
google books
*Corning video
"Gold Glass"
video (5:24) from the
Corning Museum of Glass The Corning Museum of Glass is a museum in Corning (city), New York, Corning, New York, United States, dedicated to the art, history, and science of glass. It was founded in 1951 by Corning Incorporated, Corning Glass Works and currently has a ...
* Elsner, Jaś, "Archaeologies and Agendas: Reflections on Late Ancient Jewish Art and Early Christian Art", ''The Journal of Roman Studies'', Vol. 93, (2003), pp. 114–128
JSTOR
* Elsner, Jás (2007). "The Changing Nature of Roman Art and the Art Historical Problem of Style," in Eva R. Hoffman (ed), ''Late Antique and Medieval Art of the Medieval World'', 11–18. Oxford, Malden & Carlton: Blackwell Publishing. . *Francis, Peter, ''Asia's Maritime Bead Trade: 300 B.C. to the Present'', 2002, University of Hawaii Press, , 9780824823320
google books
*Grig, Lucy, "Portraits, Pontiffs and the Christianization of Fourth-Century Rome", ''Papers of the British School at Rome'', Vol. 72, (2004), pp. 203–230
JSTOR
*"Grove": "Mosaic" in ''The Grove encyclopedia of decorative arts: Volume 2, Labhardt to Zwischengoldglas'', Editor Gordon Campbell, 2006, Oxford University Press, , 9780195189483
google books
*Henig, Martin (ed), ''A Handbook of Roman Art'', Phaidon, 1983, * Howells, Daniel Thomas (2015).
A Catalogue of the Late Antique Gold Glass in the British Museum (PDF).
London: the British Museum (Arts and Humanities Research Council). Accessed 2 October 2016.) * Hugh Honour and John Fleming, ''A World History of Art'', 7th edn. 2005, Laurence King Publishing, , 9781856694513
google books
*Lutraan, Katherine L.
''Late Roman Gold-Glass: Images and Inscriptions''
, MA thesis, McMaster University, 2006, available online -"investigates the images and inscriptions that decorate the extant corpus of gold-glass vessel bases". *Milburn, Robert, ''Early Christian art and architecture'', 1988, University of California Press, , 9780520074125
google books
*Newby, Martine S., ''Glass of 4 Millennia'', Ashmolean handbooks, 2000,
Ashmolean Museum The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology () on Beaumont Street in Oxford, England, is Britain's first public museum. Its first building was erected in 1678–1683 to house the cabinet of curiosities that Elias Ashmole gave to the University ...
, , 9781854441232
google books
*Rotroff, Susan I., "Silver, Glass, and Clay Evidence for the Dating of Hellenistic Luxury Tableware", ''Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens'', Vol. 51, No. 3 (Jul. – Sep., 1982), pp. 329–337
JSTOR
*Rudoes, Judy, ""Reproductions of the Christian Glass of the Catacombs": James Jackson Jarves and the Revival of the Art of Glass in Venice", ''Metropolitan Museum Journal'', Vol. 37, (2002), pp. 305–314, The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
JSTOR
*Rutgers, L.V., ''The Jews in Late Ancient Rome: Evidence of Cultural Interaction in the Roman Diaspora'', 2000, BRILL, , 9789004119284
google books
*Sines, George, and Sakellarakis, Yannis A., "Lenses in Antiquity", ''American Journal of Archaeology'', Vol. 91, No. 2 (Apr., 1987), pp. 191–196, Archaeological Institute of America
JSTOR
*Vickers, Michael, "The Wilshere Collection of Early Christian and Jewish Antiquities in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford," ''Miscellanea a Emilio Marin Sexagenario Dicata'', Kacic, 41–43 (2009–2011), pp. 605–614
PDF
* Weitzmann, Kurt, ed.,
Age of spirituality : late antique and early Christian art, third to seventh century
', nos. 79, 233, 261, 264–5, 347–8, 377, 382, 388, 396, 503, 507–8, 510–11, 1979,
Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...
, New York, ; full text available online from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries *Wenzel, Marian, "Islamic Gold Sandwich Glass: Some Fragments in the David Collection, Copenhagen", ''The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland'', No. 1 (1988), pp. 45–72
JSTOR
*Williams, Dyfri. ''Masterpieces of Classical Art'', 2009, British Museum Press,


Further reading

*Howells, Daniel Thomas (2015)
''A Catalogue of the Late Antique Gold Glass in the British Museum'' (PDF)
British Museum (Arts and Humanities Research Council), fully available online. *Morey, Charles R., Ferrari, Guy, ''The Gold-Glass Collection of the Vatican Library with Additional Catalogues of Other Gold-Glass Collections'', 1959, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana * British Museum Research Publication No. 179, Chapters: 13. "Making Late Antique Gold Glass", Daniel Thomas Howells; 14. "Gold Glass in Late Antiquity", Andrew Meek, in ''New Light on Old Glass: Recent Research on Byzantine Mosaics and Glass, 2013'', British Museum Press,
Full PDF online


External links



{{Authority control * Glass art Ancient Roman art Early Christian art Jewish art Ancient Roman glassware Gold Funerary art