This article discusses the Portland Vase which dates back to the end of the first century B.C.
The Portland Vase dates to the end of the first century B.C. to the beginning of the first century A.D. The Portland vase is a glass amphora made during the rule of the first Roman emperor, Augustus Caesar. It is one of the most famous artistic glass vessels ever created. The vase has a cobalt blue background with opaque white human and imaginative figures and objects cut in a cameo relief. It is almost ten inches high.
Around the start of the Common Era, the greatest craftsmen of ancient Rome toiled hard in their workshop to create a magnificent glass vase embodying serene scenes of white figures and objects against a striking dark blue background. It is probably safe to say that these artisans could hardly have imagined that this fragile vessel would survive thousands of years into the future, be owned by a succession of distinguished people, be smashed into hundreds of pieces on more than one occasion and painstakingly restored to almost its original splendor, and be studied for centuries by scholars trying to determine its original utilitarian purpose and the perplexing meaning of its idyllic scenes. Yet these events are all part of the extraordinary heritage of the so-called Portland Vase, which, for all its beauty and grandeur, remains today an artistic mystery of the ages.
With glassblowing, glassmakers could shape objects artistically, and production was less expensive. Other techniques such as painting and making clear glass enable artisans to produce many marvelous pieces. Perhaps the most famous of these is the Portland Vase.
The Portland Vase is an example of glass sculpted in cameo style. It was probably made by taking a gather of cobalt blue glass and partially dipping it into a crucible of molten white glass before blowing and fashioning the whole into the desired shape. The outlines of the design were no doubt incised first, before all the background white glass was carved away and the figures and motifs modeled in detail. The result was a design of white figures and objects against a dark blue background.
Not much is known about the history of the vase. Scholars can not determine who owned the vase in ancient Rome, and even it's emergence during the Renaissance period is shrouded in mystery. It was said to have been discovered in a sarcophagus outside Rome in the early 1580's, but there seems to be no contemporary documentation of its unearthing at this time. By the early seventeenth century it was owned by Cardinal Francesco Maria Borbone del Monte, who died in August 1626 and whose heir, Alessandro, sold it to Cardinal Antonio Barberini. The vase remained in the possession of the Barberini family, distinguished collectors of art in Rome who exhibited majestic paintings and sculptures in their palace, for 150 years.
The vase was next acquired by a Scottish architect living in Italy, James Byres, who in the early 1780's sold it to Sir William Hamilton and Englishman with a rather interesting background. Around 1784 Sir William Hamilton was in England, and Margaret, the duchess of Portland, saw the vase he had brought with him from Naples. She was enthralled with it and sought it for her collection.
Margaret was not able to enjoy her new vase for long, since she died on July 17, 1785, about a year after acquiring it. Margaret's son, the duke of Portland, purchased the ancient Roman vase and in 1810, after a family friend broke off the vase's base, lent it to the British Museum, where it presumably would be safe and could be enjoyed by a wide audience.
In 1845, however, William Mulcahy, a young man who had been drinking for several days leading up to his visit to the museum, grabbed an object and shattered the glass display case housing the vase, and then the vase itself. Mulcahy, who falsely gave his name as William Lloyd, was sentenced to a jail term for breaking the case, although not the vase, because, British law did not provide penalties for destroying items of high value, but he was soon released after an anonymous person paid his fine. The duke of Portland received notice from the museum about the smashing and pronounced the culprit mad. Exactly one century after William Mulcahy smashed the vase; the Portland family sold it to the British Museum.
The Portland Vase has been restored three times. After Mulcahy broke it into some two hundred pieces, it was repaired by the museum's John Doubleday, who was unable to fit in all the chips. Over time the glue's color changed, and in 1949, four years after the British Museum purchased the vase from the Portland family, a conservator names James H. W. Axtell carefully broke it apart and repaired it again, using a transparent glue. In 1986 Nigel Williams, the chief conservator of ceramics at the museum, and a team of assistants broke the vase, then restored it with a modern epoxy and other materials. They were also able to insert more than a dozen of the chips left over after Doubleday's repair.
After two millennia, this great work of art continues to draw people to contemplate its beauty.
