In ancient Rome, there was a high demand for colorful glass that could dazzle banquet guests alongside the expensive silver and gold serving wares meant to impress. Fragments like this one would have once been a part of larger mosaic dishes. The mosaic pattern was made by sagging molten glass into bowl-shaped molds, a technique used on many of these fragments is similar to millefiori, “thousand flowers” in Italian, a modern glass-making method in which tiny rods of colored glass are bundled together, wrapped in a sheet of glass, fused, and then thinly sliced to reveal swirls of a flower-like patterns. They were arranged side by side, sometimes together with bits of colored glass, and fused together with heat.
Date
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Sidney Goldstein, “Cats. 78–79 Two Fragments of Inlays Depicting Theater Masks: Curatorial Entry,” in Roman Art at the Art Institute of Chicago (Art Institute of Chicago, 2016).
Sidney Goldstein, “Cat. 79 Fragment of an Inlay Depicting a Theater Mask: Curatorial Entry,” in Roman Art at the Art Institute of Chicago (Art Institute of Chicago, 2016).
Roberta Casagrande-Kim, ed., When the Greeks Ruled Egypt: From Alexander the Great to Cleopatra. Exh. cat. Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (New York University/Princeton University Press, 2014), p. 106 (cat. 140).
Wanda Odell, “Ancient Glass: The Mr. and Mrs. Theodore W. Robinson Collection, Gallery 5A, The Art Institute of Chicago,” 1940, unpublished catalogue in curatorial object file, Art Institute of Chicago.
The Art Institute of Chicago, When the Greeks Ruled: Egypt After Alexander the Great, October 31, 2013 - July 27, 2014; traveled to New York City, N.Y., the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, October 8, 2014 - January 4, 2015.
The Art Institute of Chicago, Dionysos Unmasked: Ancient Sculpture and Early Prints, Gallery 150 and 154, July 31, 2015 - February 15, 2016.
Theodore W. and Frances S. Robinson, Chicago, by 1931; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.
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