Cameo Glass Skyphos (Side A/B)

This rare and opulent drinking cup is cast and carved in cameo glass, a technique of glass production primarily associated with the early Roman Empire and the elite and royal of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Its manufacture is therefore mostly limited to the approximately fifty years between 25 BC – AD 25. The most popular color scheme is opaque white glass layered over translucent deep blue glass. Although the workshop or workshops that produced this glass has not been found, it is presumed to have been located in Rome, where many fragments have been found. More pieces have been found in Pompeii and around the Bay of Naples, where powerful Romans spent their leisure time.



The shape of the cup (skyphos) emulates silver and glass drinking vessels. It was likely cast in blue with white overlay, in this case the white layer produced by trailing, whereby the glass maker reheated the cup cast in blue glass and applied a trail of molten white glass around its exterior until the blue cast shape was completely covered with a thick opaque layer of white. During the annealing (cooling) phase the images were sculpted in relief by carving the white glass away from the blue in order that light could pass through the translucent blue glass surrounding the finished relief decoration in white. The cup was then finished on a lathe, carved, cut, ground and polished. Making it would have required the skills of a glass maker to create the cup and a lapidary to carve it.



Below each handle is a mask of a silenus. The scenes on each side of the cup are thematically associated with the introduction of Ariadne to a cult, perhaps of Cybele, a statue of whom sits atop a stele in a rustic shrine on side B. In the center of side A, Ariadne reclines, partially draped, atop a pile of smoothly squared rock, with her arm thrown over her head in a posture well-known from many Roman copies in marble. The same figure appears on the Portland Vase (British Museum 1945,0927.1), the most famous cameo glass piece to have survived and a contemporary to our cup. To the left of Ariadne, a satyr holding a set of pan pipes and a crooked staff (a Bacchic pedum) looks back on the central scene as he walks away toward the nut trees on the left. To the right, a woman extends a sacred basket (liknon) towards Ariadne, perhaps depicting the revelation of the Bacchic cult. On side B, in a divine sanctuary framed by fig trees, an identical figure and thus also Ariadne, sits at right in front of an altar and a tall stele crowned by a statuette of Cybele. At left is a partially draped woman leaning on a krater, drinking wine from a large cup. Between them stands a satyr playing a lyre, underscoring the musical nature of the setting and walking toward this woman as he turns to look back at Ariadne.