173. Beaker

Condition

Reassembled, with large fills on the body.

Description

Cracked-off rim on the overblow; conical body; flat base impressed with two concentric circles around a central dot.

Mold-blown decoration consists of four large raised ovals that cover the body: each one is filled with two winding vertical tendrils that form a stylized flower at the ends. A stylized bucranium is placed on the upper part between the oval fields. Under each oval is a curved ribbon forming a garland suspended from circular bosses placed in the area between the oval fields.

On the flat bottom there is a central boss and two raised concentric circles, the outer forming a base-ring.

Comments and Comparanda

This variant of the widely known truncated conical beakers (Isings 1957, pp. 45–46, form 31) is particular for its decoration and quite rare. It has been proposed that they are local products of the Vesuvian area. In Pompeii two almost identical examples, without the bucranium between the ovals, have been unearthed (Scatozza Höricht 1995, pp. 81, 83, fig. 15). Another example has been recovered from the excavations in Herculaneum in a shop on the central street, the Decumanus Maximus, where it was unearthed in its original straw holder, together with other glass vessels. The beaker from Herculaneum was made in a different mold, and the area between the oval fields is slightly wider, with four rectangular impressions placed along it. These impressions do not appear on the preserved part of the Pompeian find, but most of the vessel is missing, so it remains unclear if they did originally exist or not.

The production of the beakers is dated on stylistic grounds a few decades before the catastrophic eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE. The scroll on the Pompeian fragment has been associated with those on the Ara Pacis Augustae (Isings 1957, p. 45). Although this association cannot be excluded, it is likely simply a more general similarity, reflecting the same artistic vocabulary used on the glass vessel and the altar, among others, but a different size, media, and techniques have clearly been used in the execution of the motif. It is difficult to compare the subtle and complex rendering of the altar with the stylized scrolls and bucrania on the glass vessel. For direct comparanda, see Scatozza Höricht 1986, pp. 39–40, form 19, no. 66, plate VII; Scatozza Höricht 1995, pp. 81, 83, fig. 15; Foy and Nenna 2001, p. 181, no. 302 (from a Villa in Toulon, from a context dated ca. 80 CE).

Provenance

By 1974–1988, Erwin Oppenländer, 1901–1988 (Waiblingen, Germany), by inheritance to his son, Gert Oppenländer, 1988; 1988–2003, Gert Oppenländer (Waiblingen, Germany), sold to the J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003

Bibliography

von Saldern et al. 1974, p. 166, no. 456.

Stern 1995, p. 110, n. 14b.

Scatozza Höricht 1986, p. 39.

Exhibitions

Molten Color: Glassmaking in Antiquity (Malibu, 2005–2006; 2007; 2009–2010)

Pompeii and the Roman Villa: Art and Culture around the Bay of Naples (Los Angeles, 2009)

Gläser der Antike: Sammlung Erwin Oppenländer (Hamburg and Cologne, 1974–1975)