table

Italy, Rome, Vatican Mosaic Workshops, probably Giovanni Rossignani, about 1866 This elaborate tabletop was submitted by the papal government to the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1867. It consists of a large disk of white marble, inlaid in the pietra dura technique. The more than 2,000 glass pieces include about 320 types of Hellenistic and Roman mosaic glass dating from about 100 B.C. to A.D. 50. They are combined with 19th-century monochrome glass from Venetian suppliers. The tabletop is attributed to Giovanni Rossignani, a Roman craftsman who worked for the Vatican Mosaic Workshops in the mid-19th century. The catalog of the 1867 exhibition comments on the artist's ingenuity in reheating and flattening the ancient vessel fragments for use in this technically complicated design. Only two other tabletops of this type are known, but they do not have the encyclopedic variety of mosaic glass that is contained in this example.