Browse Items (972 total)

Museum Description: "Standing in a blue shell, Aphrodite Anadyomene wrings seawater from her hair. The pose was well known in antiquity, referring to the goddess’s birth from the sea, of which the deep blue color of the lapis lazuli is a visual…

Museum description: “Most ivory and bone containers are really wooden, covered with veneers of ivory. This craftsman chose the more extravagant option of carving the box with its six compartments out of a solid block of ivory, the rounded back…

Folio from a manuscript of Mu'nis al-ahrar fi daqa 'iq al-ash'ar (The Free Men's Companion to the Subtleties of Poems) by Muhammad ibn Badr al-Din Jajarmi: Treasurer, money changer, courier and jeweler; tent, pavilion, drum, and banner; lion, onager,…

This sculpture group depicts the Four Tetrarchs, the four rulers of the Roman Empire as established by Diocletian. The rulers were divided into two groups: the augusti (Diocletian and Maximian) and the caesares (Galerius and Constantius I). There is…

This gold bar is one of fifteen (all dating to the 4th century) that were found in Romania in the late 19th century. The form makes it more easily transportable, and it most likely would have been brought to a mint where it would have been melted…

Missorium of Theodosius I, 388, Roman, silver and silver gilt, diam: 74 cm, weight: 15.35 kg, Madrid, Academia de la Historia.

This silver dish, most likely made in Constantinople, was meant to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Theodosius I’s…

Museum Descprition: “Apolausis, the personification of enjoyment, welcomes visitors to Dumbarton Oaks as she has done since its doors opened to the public in 1941. The floor had been discovered just a few years before in a bath building located…

This fresco of Adam and Eve in the garden is instantly recognizable to anyone who is familiar with the scene from later centuries of Christian art. Within the catacomb, there is a mixture of pagan (including a representation of Orpheus playing a…

The so-called Byzantine Church in Petra is one of three Byzantine Churches in the city, the other two are the Ridge Church (also called the Red Church) and the Blue Chapel. It is generally The Byzantine Church is thought to have been built in the…