64. Finned Bowl

Condition

Fully preserved; cracked.

Description

Mildly flaring, rounded rim; hemispherical body; and convex bottom. An incised, six-petaled rosette is set in a circle at the center of the bowl’s bottom. Probably representing lotus petals, 12 pointed leaves spring from this medallion. Each leaf is formed of three elongated grooves. In between the leaves, 12 short, vertical, slightly slanting fins project from the surface around the middle of the body. The fins differ in size, ranging from 2.8 to 3.3 cm, and they are mildly slanted. An oblique notch/tooling mark is visible below one of the fins. A pair of faint horizontal grooves is incised at the exterior, 1.7 cm below the rim, midway between the rim and the ribs. In the interior, two horizontal grooves, one at 1.7 and another at 3.3 cm below the rim.

Comments and Comparanda

This bowl belongs to a group of high-quality Hellenistic tableware vessels, predominantly plates, hemispherical bowls, sometimes footed or finned, like 2003.215, and skyphoi found in burials in Canosa, in southern Italy, the ancient Canusium (for an overview on Canosa Group vessels, see Stern and Schlick-Nolte 1994, p. 97–115). The vessels belong to two main groups: Millefiori Mosaic Glass and Cast Monochrome Tablewares, the latter made of decolorized (cat. 63), occasionally gilded glass or of strongly colored deep blue and light blue or purple glass (cat. 62) (Oliver 1968, pp. 48–55; Grose 1989, pp. 185–189). Occasionally they were decorated with lathe-cut bands, grooves, or fins, or gilding; a very few had gold-leaf designs set between two fine colorless bowls in a sandwich gold-glass technique. They have been dated between the late third and the late second century BCE, although individual vessels of all hoards range from the late third to late first century BCE (Stern and Schlick-Nolte 1994, pp. 100–102). This particular bowl was made of intensely colored glass by chip casting (Lierke 2009, p. 27–29; Stern and Schlick-Nolte 1994, pp. 49–53, 110–111).

Metal vessels served as prototypes for the shape and the decoration of finned or lobed bowls. They appear in an earlier, third-century BCE version made of decolorized glass with varying petal patterns and a number of fins around the shoulders. Published finds are known from Gordion (von Saldern 1959, pp. 38–40, nos. 7–13, dated to the third century), Canosa (Harden 1968, pp. 27–28, 31, 35, nos. 7, 2.d, 5, fig. 21; Bartoccini 1935, pp. 246, fig. 12, plates I–II), Xanthos (Demargne 1958, pp. 61, 64, 68f., plate XX, no. 1856), and museum collections (British Museum: Harden 1968, pp. 27–28, no. 7, figs. 20–22). A later variant, a type to which this vessel belongs, has been dated to the late second–early first centuries BCE. The fins on these bowls, unlike the earlier examples, are placed between the tips of the petals of the stylized lotus that decorate the body. The petals are narrower and plainer in design compared to the earlier examples; they share the same size, rendered in sunk relief. Published examples include those from the shipwreck in Antikythera, Greece (Weinberg 1965, pp. 32–33, no. 2, figs. 7–8; Weinberg and McClellan 1992, pp. 104–105, no. 61), Camarat 2, France (Foy and Nenna 2001, p. 104, nos. 129.2–3), Delos (Nenna 1999a, pp. 94–97, no. C252), and museum collections (Corning Museum of Art: Goldstein 1979, pp. 134–135, no. 277, plate 37). For an overview of the form and the finds, see Weinberg 1965, pp. 32–33; and Harden 1968, pp. 43–44.

Provenance

Giorgio Sangiorgi, Italian, 1886–1965 (Rome, Italy); by 1959, Private Collection; 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 1959, p. 39, no. 11, fig. 21.

von Saldern et al. 1974, p. 92, no. 242; p. 98, plate no. 242.

Exhibitions

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

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