Gold glass

Verre églomisé properly covers a single layer of glass which is gilded (or coated with other types of metal leaf) on the back, as used in 19th century shop signs and the like.

[7] These smoother-edged medallions exploited the medium of glass as a matrix for portrait miniatures, and it has proved to be a very effective one, outlasting all alternatives except for precious metal and engraved gems.

They were probably initially made to be hung for display, or set in jewellery in smaller examples like that of Gennadios, but were also used for funerary purposes, and often use a base of blue glass.

Easily transported and very attractive, Roman gold glass beads have been found as far outside the Empire as the Wari-Bateshwar ruins in Bangladesh, and sites in China, Korea, Thailand and Malaysia.

[11] The most common form of vessel in late Roman examples was a bowl or drinking cup, which are thought to have been originally family gifts for weddings, anniversaries, New Year, the various religious festivals and the like, in some cases perhaps presented at birth or Christian baptism.

However Roman drinking cups and glasses were often very wide and shallow, though tall straight-sided or slightly flared shapes like modern tumblers are also found.

The two amphorae are inscribed with "ΠΙΕ" and "ΣΗϹΗϹ" the Greek originals of the toasting formulae "pie zeses" ("Drink, may you live", discussed below) so common on Roman glasses, and it has been suggested that the mosaic shows the shape a complete cup would have had.

Bodies were buried in the catacombs in small recesses called loculi, stacked one above another mostly along narrow corridors hollowed out from the soft rock, and no doubt some form of marker was necessary for visitors to locate the right spot.

They may also have functioned as a seal on the grave, as they were pressed into the mortar or stucco forming the final surface of the wall of the loculus; other classes of small decorative objects were also used in the same way.

The different sets of imagery, apart from the increased number of private portraits, are typical of the paintings also found in the catacombs and other Early Christian art and its Jewish equivalent from the period.

[17] As Christian art developed in the late 4th and 5th centuries, its changes are reflected in the subjects and their treatment in gold glass, before the catacombs ceased to be used and the supply of examples ends.

It has most of the interior very finely decorated with lotus and acanthus motifs, which are more typical of gold glass in this period than designs with human figures.

[21] A description perhaps dating from the 270s BC (surviving in the works of the later writer Athenaeus) mentions two vessels that are diachysa ("with gold in it") and very likely made by this technique.

[24] The decorated late Roman pieces are usually assumed to have been made in and around Rome, especially in the case of portraits of residents there, but also in the Rhineland around Cologne and Augusta Treverorum, modern Trier, which was a centre for other luxury glass products like cage cups.

Alexandria is still thought to have been a major centre, and from linguistic analysis of the inscriptions it has been suggested that the technique, and perhaps the actual artists and craftsmen, reached Rome and Germany from there.

[25] Apart from the Rhineland finds discussed below, small numbers of cut-off vessel bases have been found in northern Italy and modern Hungary and Croatia.

[27] One of the most famous Alexandrian-style portrait medallions, with an inscription in Egyptian Greek, was later mounted in an Early Medieval crux gemmata in Brescia, in the mistaken belief that it showed the pious empress and Gothic queen Galla Placida (died 450) and her children;[28] in fact the knot in the central figure's dress may mark a devotee of Isis.

[34] An "Alexander plate with hunting scene" in the Cleveland Museum of Art is, if genuine,[35] a very rare example of a complete vessel decorated with gold glass, and comes from the upper elite of Roman society.

Two glasses including images of Jesus "misspell" "ZESES" as "ZESUS", managing to achieve wordplay between a drinking toast and the name of the Christian saviour.

The Wedding at Cana is a popular Christian subject, with one example inscribed "Worthy of your friends, may you live in the peace of God, drink".

[43] A large and complex bowl from Cologne was decorated all over with Christian scenes and Imperial portraits, but presumably because of its size (height 8.6, diameter 11.4 cm) no second layer of glass was fused on, so the gold has now all been lost, though the shapes of the design can be seen.

Of these, about half of the total number of gold glasses known,[47] portraits are most common, but there are small narrative scenes, mainly Christian but a few pagan.

No Imperial portraits are recorded, nor military scenes; unlike so much Roman public art the glasses concentrate on the private interests of individuals.

Either portraits or inscriptions naming private individuals are very common, though other examples have no personalizing aspect and were perhaps just bought from a dealer's stock.

[56] Christ is shown in a number of examples, usually as clean-shaven and youthful, as well as figures such as the Good Shepherd which may symbolize him, or in some cases Orpheus or general bucolic imagery.

[61] Single examples show Athena presiding over shipbuilders, a pair of personifications of Rome and Constantinople, and female figures representing the monetae or mints, which are often shown on coins.

[69] They are all presumed to have been used in the Roman catacombs as grave-markers, though as with the examples identifiable with other religions, the exact find spot and context of the great majority is unrecorded.

The most common arrangement is on two levels, with two Lions of Judah flanking a Torah ark above, and below two menarot, a shofar (rams horn), etrog, lulav and perhaps others of the four Species, scrolls and vases.

[75] The technique continued to be used for mosaic tesserae, and at times for pieces that remained relatively large, for example in a small tile in New York with a pattern forming a cross, perhaps from a Syrian church of the 9th to 12th centuries.

[80] In the 19th century a number of imitations, copies and downright forgeries of Roman pieces were made, mostly in Murano off Venice, by firms such as Salviati.