Condition
Mended; fully preserved; small chipping on the rim filled.
Description
The bowl has an upright rounded lip; cylindrical body tapering toward the flat bottom. It stands on a tall, conical base-ring formed by a single revolution of an applied ribbon coil of glass, which consists of at least 10 layers of translucent purple and opaque turquoise and green glass.
The rim is a twisted purple and white rope-like cane. The vessel is made of a matrix comprising four types of circular mosaic sections, florets, fused together.
The first type of floret, which is the most numerous, consists of a yellow central rod surrounded by 17 translucent purple, trapezoidal petals outlined with white.
The second, quite numerous type of floret consists of a purple central rod surrounded by 13 yellow, trapezoidal petals outlined in white.
The third, less numerous type of floret consists of a thin central purple rod set in a thicker layer of white glass, surrounded by 13 translucent green, trapezoidal petals outlined in yellow.
The fourth type of floret appears with only one example and consists of a central green rod set in a thin layer of yellow glass surrounded by 13 translucent purple, trapezoidal petals outlined in white.
The fifth type of floret appears in a fragment of a floret, and consists of a central turquoise rod surrounded by a layer of translucent purple glass with white rods arranged in it—seven in the preserved part of the floret—flanked with white, which is set in a turquoise layer.
The typology of canes used for the production of the vessel includes two types of twisted cane, one made of opaque white and translucent turquoise glass, and the other of opaque white and translucent purple glass
Comments and Comparanda
See comments on cat. 86.
Different forms of Hellenistic mosaic bowls are known, and three different kinds of mosaic (network, striped, or ribbon and composite mosaic) were used for their production (Weinberg, Gladys D. 1965. “The Glass Vessels from the Antikythera Wreck.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 55, no.3: 30–39.; Oliver, Andrew, Jr. 1968. “Millefiori Glass in Classical Antiquity.” Journal of Glass Studies 10: 48–70.; Grose, David Frederick. 1989. Early Ancient Glass: Core-Formed, Rod-Formed, and Cast Vessels and Objects from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Roman Empire, 1600 B.C. to A.D. 50. New York: Hudson Hills Press., pp. 189–197; and more recently Lightfoot, Christopher S. 2019. “Hellenistic Glass: All That Glitters Is Not Gold.” In Art of the Hellenistic Kingdoms from Pergamon to Rome, ed. Seán Hemingway and Kyriaki Karoglou, 168–176. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.). The production center for mosaic and network mosaic vessels remains unknown, although a proposed location is Alexandria, Egypt (Arveiller-Dulong, Véronique, and Marie-Dominique Nenna. 2000. Les verres antiques du Musée du Louvre 1: Contenants à parfums en verre moulé sur noyau et vaisselle moulée: VIIe siècle avant J.-C.–Ier siècle après J.-C. Paris: Somogy., pp. 18, 140).
This particular bowl belongs to a group of late Hellenistic glass mosaic vessels: non-carinated, convex-sided mosaic bowls with a tall splaying base, examples of which have been recovered from a shipwreck that sank about 80 BCE off the island of Antikythera in the Aegean Sea, carrying a diverse cargo traveling from the eastern Mediterranean to Italy (Weinberg, Gladys D. 1965. “The Glass Vessels from the Antikythera Wreck.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 55, no.3: 30–39.; Weinberg, Gladys D., and Murray C. McClellan. 1992. Glass Vessels in Ancient Greece: Their History Illustrated from the Collection of the National Archaeological Museum, Athens. Athens: Archaeological Receipt Fund., pp. 28–33; Avronidaki, Christina. 2012. “The Glassware.” In The Antikythera Shipwreck: The Ship, the Treasures, the Mechanism, exh. cat., ed. Nikolaos Kaltsas, Elena Vlachogianni, and Polyxeni Bouyia, 132–145. Athens: National Archaeological Museum., pp. 140–145). A few similar non-carinated, convex-sided mosaic bowls, occasionally with a splayed base, have been very scarcely noted among Roman mosaic vessels dating from the late first century BCE to the early first century CE (Grose, David Frederick. 1989. Early Ancient Glass: Core-Formed, Rod-Formed, and Cast Vessels and Objects from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Roman Empire, 1600 B.C. to A.D. 50. New York: Hudson Hills Press., pp. 253–254: “composite mosaic vessels with applied rims”).
For bowls similar in shape but of different type of mosaic (Ribbon Bowls), see cat. 118.
Provenance
By 1981, Private Collection (Switzerland); 1985, Ernst Kofler, 1899–1989, and Marthe Truniger, 1918–1999 (Lucerne, Switzerland); 1985, Private Collection [sold, Ancient Glass: Formerly the Kofler-Truniger Collection, Christie’s, London, March 5–6, 1985, lot 191, to the J. Paul Getty Museum through Robin Symes, Limited]
Bibliography
Kunz, Martin, ed. 1981. 3000 Jahre Glaskunst: Von der Antike bis zum Jugendstil, exh. cat. Lucerne: Kunstmuseum., p. 62, no. 157, ill.
Ancient Glass. Formerly the Kofler-Truniger Collection, March 5–6, 1985, sale cat. London: Christie’s., lot 191.
“Acquisitions/1985.” J. Paul Getty Museum Journal 14 (1986): 175–286., p. 194, no. 64.
Exhibitions
None