This is a list of surviving ancient Roman gold glass portraits of the finer painted sort. The majority of surviving Roman gold glass pieces are the cut-off bottoms of drinking glasses made with unpainted gold leaf. These sometimes bear the names of individuals and were probably commemorative gifts on a special occasion such as a wedding anniversary or winning a contest. Achieving a good likeness was probably not an aim, and certainly not an achievement of this class of object, and they are not included here. The objects here belong to a smaller class of finely painted portrait miniatures, although a few seem also to have been originally placed in cups. Following a table summarizing the basic information, individual portraits are discussed in separate sections.
| Portrait | Location | Date | Size | Inscription | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Museo di Santa Giulia, Brescia, Italy[1] Traditionally, but wrongly, identified as Galla Placidia with Valentinian III and Honoria. See section below for full account. | 3rd or 4th century | 6 cm in diameter[2] | Greek: Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: ΒΟΥΝΝΕΡΙ ΚΕΡΑΜΙ[3] (bounneri kerami, meaning uncertain) | ||
| Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City[4] | 250–300 | 4.1 cm in diameter | Greek: Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: ΓΕΝΝΑΔΙ ΧΡΩΜΑΤΙ ΠΑΜΜΟΥΣΙ[5] (Gennadi chrōmati pammousi, "Gennadios, most skilled in music")[6] | ||
| Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City[7] | early 4th century | 4.8 cm in diameter | no inscription | ||
| Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York[8] | 3rd century | 4.9 cm in diameter | Latin: Latin: ANATOLI GAVDIAS ("Anatolius, rejoice!") | ||
| Victoria and Albert Museum, London[9] | 3rd or 4th century | 4.4 cm in diameter | no inscription | ||
| British Museum, London[10] | ? | 5.1 cm in diameter | no inscription | ||
| Archeological Museum, Bologna, Italy[11] | 1st quarter of 4th century | 5.1 cm in diameter[12] | Latin transcription of Greek: Latin: PIE ZESES ("Drink and you will live") | ||
| Archeological Museum, Bologna, Italy[13] | 1st quarter of 4th century | 4.5 cm in diameter[14] | no inscription | ||
| Archeological Museum, Bologna, Italy[15] | 4th century[16] | 3.5 cm in diameter | Latin: Latin: M. COCCEIUS ONESIMUS (probably, the name of the boy) | ||
| Archeological Museum, Arezzo, Italy[17] | 200–250 | 4.4 cm in diameter | no inscription | ||
| Museo Sacro, Vatican Library[18] | first half of the 3rd century | 4.9 cm in diameter | Latin: Latin: GRECO RIBIBETPROPINATUIS (perhaps, "Gregory, drink and drink to thine") | ||
| Vatican Library[19] | ? | ? | no inscription | ||
| Museo Sacro, Vatican Library | 3rd century[20] | 4.8 cm in diameter[21] | Latin: Latin: EUSEBI ANIMA DULCIS (?) | ||
| Vatican Museums[22] | 3rd or 4th century[23] | ? | Latin: Latin: GREGORI SIMPLICI CONRECESCATES (?) | ||
| Catacomb of San Panfilo, Rome[24] | 4th century or earlier | ? | no inscription | ||
| Museo Civico, Turin, Italy[25] | mid-3rd century | 4.5 cm in diameter | no inscription | ||
| Museo Civico, Turin, Italy[26] | 3rd century | ? | no inscription | ||
| Vatican Museums[27] | 17th-century copy of a lost original | ? | Latin: [partly illegible] Latin: CE PIE ZESES[28] [29] ("Drink and you will live") |
The portrait medallion is a part of the ornamentation of the so-called Desiderius Cross, 9th-century processional crux gemmata currently preserved in Museo di Santa Giulia, Brescia, Italy.
The medallion is often referred to as a portrait of Galla Placidia and her children, but the current scholarly consensus is strongly against this 18th-century identification.[3]
Some 19th-century scholars, including Raffaele Garrucci and Hermann Vopel, suspected the work to be a fake.[3] [30] [31] The earliest mention of the medallion comes from a 17th-century inventory.[3] In 1762, Francesco Antonio Zaccaria recalled that he saw it circa 1725.[3]
Several details indicate the Egyptian, perhaps Alexandrian origin of the medallion. Both words of the inscription (Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: ΒΟΥΝΝΕΡΙ ΚΕΡΑΜΙ) end in iota, possibly indicating the Ancient Greek dialect of Egypt; Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: ΚΕΡΑΜΙ, then, means "potter".[3] Stylistically, the painting is closely related to the 3rd-century mummy portraits found in the Faiyum Oasis.[3] The costumes are more consistent with the contemporary fashions in Egypt than in Rome itself. In particular, the mantle worn by the middle figure is not fastened by a fibula, but instead knotted; one parallel for this is a 3rd-century Coptic tapestry medallion, now in the Hermitage Museum, showing the goddess Gaea with her mantle knotted in a similar way.[32] The peculiar hair style of the older woman is unknown in Roman portraiture, but can be found on some 3rd-century plaster mummy masks from Egypt.[33]
Howells (2015) summarizes the research into the Brescia medallion demonstrating its connection to contemporaneous Roman-Egyptian art (in particular the Fayum mummy portraits) as well as linguistic arguments supporting the authenticity of the artefact based on 18th century scholarship.[34] Jás Elsner (2007) also contends that the Brescia medallion likely depicts a family from Alexandria, since the inscription is in the Alexandrian dialect of Greek, and provides possible dates ranging from the early-3rd to mid-5th century AD, before it found its way to Italy where it adorned a 7th-century cross.[35]
Gold-glass forgeries are known to have been forged all through the 18th and 19th centuries. In 1759, French antiquarian Anne Claude de Caylus wrote that contemporary Roman dealers were selling gold-glass reproductions to tourists who thought them original.[36] [37] Metropolitan Museum of Art has what are thought to be two 18th-century fake group portraits, while the British Museum has two 19th-century ones.
"Comparing the iconography of the Brescia medallion with other more closely dated objects from Egypt, Hayford Peirce then proposed that brushed technique medallions were produced in the early 3rd century, whilst de Mély himself advocated a more general 3rd-century date. With the authenticity of the medallion more firmly established, Joseph Breck was prepared to propose a late 3rd to early 4th century date for all of the brushed technique cobalt blue-backed portrait medallions, some of which also had Greek inscriptions in the Alexandrian dialect. Although considered genuine by the majority of scholars by this point, the unequivocal authenticity of these glasses was not fully established until 1941 when Gerhart Ladner discovered and published a photograph of one such medallion still in situ, where it remains to this day, impressed into the plaster sealing in an individual loculus in the Catacomb of Panfilo in Rome (Pl. 2). Shortly after in 1942, Morey used the phrase ‘brushed technique’ to categorize this gold glass type, the iconography being produced through a series of small incisions undertaken with a gem cutter’s precision and lending themselves to a chiaroscuro-like effect similar to that of a fine steel engraving simulating brush strokes."