Condition
Rim and upper body fragment.
Description
The vessel, apparently a deep bowl, has a vertical rim with lip ground both inside and outside, and conical body. Two horizontal ridges form a depressed band 0.5 cm below the rim on part of the fragment—probably a tooling mark and not a decorative feature. The preserved part of the vessel is made of rectangular mosaic tesserae, with florets of two types: (1) a large quatrefoil of consecutive layers of yellow in green, white, and red, set in a thick dark blue ground, quite probably rendering a four-petaled flower; (2) smaller quatrefoils of green petals set in yellow, which are set in greenish ground.
Comments and Comparanda
For the production technique, see Dawes, Susan. 2002. “Hellenistic and Roman Mosaic Glass: A New Theory of Production.” Annual of the British School at Athens 97: 413–428. and comments on cat. 86. For closer parallels, see cat. 94. The tesserae depicting the larger, four-petaled flower appear often in plaques with Egyptianizing floral motifs, such as cat. 460. On the trade of small fragments of mosaic glass in the nineteenth century and on the different techniques and classes of mosaic glass present in the Getty collection, see comments on cat. 95.
A fragment, probably part of the rim of an open-shape vessel, with identical motif is in the Freer Gallery (F. 1909.512.3.6; Liu, Robert K. 2008. “Roman Mosaic Face Plaques and Beads.” Ornament 31, no. 5: 60–65., p. 64, lower photo, F1909.512; https://asia.si.edu/object/F1909.512/#object-content), originally bought from J. Dattari, an antiquarian and antiquities dealer from Cairo.
Provenance
1983, Jiří K. Frel, 1923–2006, donated to the J. Paul Getty Museum, 1983
Bibliography
Unpublished
Exhibitions
None