Rooms in Roman houses were largely devoid of furniture, and instead, much more emphasis was given to the display of works of art--mosaic floors, wall paintings, and freestanding bronze and marble sculpture. This unusual table with its elaborate bronze and marble support would certainly have been appropriate in such a context. It was probably used in the public part of a wealthy Roman’s villa or town house, such as the atrium (entrance hall), to exhibit a particularly fine work of art or a set of expensive metal or glass vessels. The bronze frame to the marble tabletop is richly decorated with silver and copper inlay, but as it stands today, much of the leg and base is restored.
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Title:Marble and bronze table
Period:Early Imperial
Date:1st century CE
Culture:Roman
Medium:Marble and bronze
Dimensions:Other: 32 x 25 3/4 x 41 3/4 in. (81.3 x 65.4 x 106 cm)
Classification:Stone Sculpture
Credit Line:Rogers Fund, 1906
Accession Number:06.1021.301
Said to be from Boscoreale, near Pompeii.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1910. "Department of Classical Art: The Accessions of 1909." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 5(2): pp. 38, 40.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1915. Greek, Etruscan and Roman Bronzes. no. 1211, pp. 355–56, New York: Gilliss Press.
McClees, Helen. 1924. The Daily Life of the Greeks and Romans: As Illustrated in the Classical Collections. p. 24, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1926. Ancient Furniture: A History of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Furniture. p. 139–40, fig. 329, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1927. Handbook of the Classical Collection. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Iliffe, John H. 1928. "Two Roman Bronze Tables from the Fayoum." Bulletin of the Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology, 7: p. 11.
Johnston, Harold Whetstone. 1932. The Private Life of the Romans. p. 168, Chicago: Scott, Foresman and Company.
McClees, Helen and Christine Alexander. 1933. The Daily Life of the Greeks and Romans: As Illustrated in the Classical Collections, 5th ed. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1940. "A Rearrangement of Roman Portraits." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 35(10): p. 201.
1951. "Bronze." The Encyclopaedia Britannica pl. I,3, London.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1966. The Furniture of the Greeks, Etruscans and Romans. p. 112, fig. 566, London: Phaidon Press.
Yerkes, Sara R. 2005. "'Living Architecture’: Living Column and Vegetal Urn. Shared Motifs in Roman Wall Painting and ‘Neo-Attic’ Furnishings." Terra marique : studies in art history and marine archaeology in honor of Anna Marguerite McCann on the receipt of the gold medal of the Archaeological Institute of America, Prof. John Pollini, ed. p. 152, fig. 11.7, Oxford: Oxbow Books.
Zanker, Paul, Seán Hemingway, Christopher S. Lightfoot, and Joan R. Mertens. 2019. Roman Art : A Guide through the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Collection. no. 47, pp. 142–43, New York: Scala Publishers.
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The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than 30,000 works ranging in date from the Neolithic period to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312.
