Editing Roman art (section)

===Gold glass===
{{main|Gold glass}}
{{further|List of gold-glass portraits}}
[[File:Galla Placidia (rechts) und ihre Kinder.jpg|thumb|left|Detail of the [[gold glass]] medallion in [[Brescia]] ([[Museo di Santa Giulia]]), most likely [[Alexandria]]n, 3rd century AD<ref name="howells 2015 p7">Daniel Thomas Howells (2015). "[http://www.britishmuseum.org/pdf/Late_Antique_Gold_Glass_online.pdf A Catalogue of the Late Antique Gold Glass in the British Museum (PDF).]" London: the British Museum (Arts and Humanities Research Council). Accessed 2 October 2016, p. 7: "Other important contributions to scholarship included the publication of an extensive summary of gold glass scholarship under the entry ‘Fonds de coupes’ in Fernand Cabrol and Henri Leclercq's comprehensive Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie in 1923. Leclercq updated Vopel's catalogue, recording 512 gold glasses considered to be genuine, and developed a typological series consisting of eleven iconographic subjects: biblical subjects; Christ and the saints; various legends; inscriptions; pagan deities; secular subjects; male portraits; female portraits; portraits of couples and families; animals; and Jewish symbols. In a 1926 article devoted to the brushed technique gold glass known as the Brescia medallion (Pl. 1), Fernand de Mély challenged the deeply ingrained opinion of Garrucci and Vopel that all examples of brushed technique gold glass were in fact forgeries. The following year, de Mély's hypothesis was supported and further elaborated upon in two articles by different scholars. A case for the Brescia medallion's authenticity was argued for, not on the basis of its iconographic and orthographic similarity with pieces from Rome (a key reason for Garrucci's dismissal), but instead for its close similarity to the Fayoum mummy portraits from Egypt. Indeed, this comparison was given further credence by Walter Crum's assertion that the Greek inscription on the medallion was written in the Alexandrian dialect of Egypt. De Mély noted that the medallion and its inscription had been reported as early as 1725, far too early for the idiosyncrasies of Graeco-Egyptian word endings to have been understood by forgers."

"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."</ref>]]

[[Gold glass]], or gold sandwich glass, was a technique for fixing a layer of [[gold leaf]] with a design between two fused layers of glass, developed in [[Hellenistic glass]] and revived in the 3rd century AD.  There are a very few large designs, including a very fine group of portraits from the 3rd century with added paint, but the great majority of the around 500 survivals are roundels that are the cut-off bottoms of wine cups or glasses used to mark and decorate graves in the [[Catacombs of Rome]] by pressing them into the mortar. They predominantly date from the 4th and 5th centuries. Most are Christian, though there are many pagan and a few Jewish examples. It is likely that they were originally given as gifts on marriage, or festive occasions such as New Year.  Their [[iconography]] has been much studied, although artistically they are relatively unsophisticated.<ref>Beckwith, 25-26,</ref>  Their subjects are similar to the catacomb paintings, but with a difference balance including more portraiture.  As time went on there was an increase in the depiction of saints.<ref>Grig, throughout</ref>  The same technique began to be used for gold [[tesserae]] for mosaics in the mid-1st century in Rome, and by the 5th century these had become the standard background for religious mosaics.

The earlier group are "among the most vivid portraits to survive from Early Christian times. They stare out at us with an extraordinary stern and melancholy intensity",<ref>Honour and Fleming, Pt 2, "The Catacombs" at illustration 7.7</ref> and represent the best surviving indications of what high quality Roman portraiture could achieve in paint. The Gennadios medallion in the [[Metropolitan Museum of Art]] in New York, is a fine example of an Alexandrian portrait on blue glass, using a rather more complex technique and naturalistic style than most Late Roman examples, including painting onto the gold to create shading, and with the Greek inscription showing local [[dialect]] features.  He had perhaps been given or commissioned the piece to celebrate victory in a musical competition.<ref>Weitzmann, no. 264, entry by J.D.B.; see also no. 265; [http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/search-the-collections/170006564 Medallion with a Portrait of Gennadios], Metropolitan Museum of Art, with better image.</ref>  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 [[Ostrogoths|Gothic]] queen [[Galla Placida]] and her children;<ref>Boardman, 338-340; Beckwith, 25</ref> in fact the knot in the central figure's dress may mark a devotee of [[Isis]].<ref>Vickers, 611</ref>  This is one of a group of 14 pieces dating to the 3rd century AD, all individualized secular portraits of high quality.<ref>Grig, 207</ref> The inscription on the medallion is written in the [[Greeks in Egypt|Alexandrian dialect of Greek]] and hence most likely depicts a family from [[Roman Egypt]].<ref>Jás Elsner (2007). "The Changing Nature of Roman Art and the Art Historical Problem of Style," in Eva R. Hoffman (ed), ''Late Antique and Medieval Art of the Medieval World'', 11-18. Oxford, Malden & Carlton: Blackwell Publishing. {{ISBN|978-1-4051-2071-5}},  p. 17, Figure 1.3 on p. 18.</ref> The medallion has also been compared to other works of contemporaneous Roman-Egyptian artwork, such as the [[Fayum mummy portraits]].<ref name="howells 2015 p7"/> It is thought that the tiny detail of pieces such as these can only have been achieved using [[Lens (optics)|lenses]].<ref>Sines and Sakellarakis, 194-195</ref>  The later glasses from the catacombs have a level of portraiture that is rudimentary, with features, hairstyles and clothes all following stereotypical styles.<ref>Grig, 207; Lutraan, 29-45 goes into considerable detail</ref>