Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 8.djvu/237

 Tin: Bl'I.LA [{:>i IJY Ko.MAN BoYS. 171 now the singular felicity of producing it for inspection. It represents a lady with the boy, who wears the bulla, in her arms. Ficoroni thought that it belonged to the age of Alexander Severus ; ]liddleton (p. 3G,) contends for a yet higher anticpiity. The boy's dress is exactly the same as in the etching already mentioned, which is in the British Museum. We observe also the two layers of glass cemented together ; and the circular border of the glass is entire, so that it does not appear to have been the bottom of a patera, as has been supposed, but to be complete in itself'' The lower piece of glass is throughout of a deep blue colour. The upper layer is of the same deep blue, except where we ob- serve a circle of gold near the border and the figures of the mother and child. These portions appear to consist of colourless glass. Thus the figures painted on the under surface of this upper la^^er are seen as we look do^yn upon it, and the under layer of glass has preserved the painting from injury, so that it is probably as fresh now as when it came more than IGOO years ago from the hands of the artist. The method of fixing the gold to the glass, and of joining the blue glass, called " sapphire," to the white colourless glass, was by placing the composition in a furnace, by the heat of which the glass was partially melted.'' To these examples of pictures on glass may apparently be added one of much larger size, wdiich is engraved by Leichius,^ and wdiich, as he states, w^as preserved in the Library at Leipzig. It represents a Roman family, consisting of a boy, who wears the bulla, wath his father and mother. Another, formerly at Strawberry Hill, is in the possession of the Rev. Dr. Bliss, of Oxford.*' It remains to mention the representations of boys with the bulla in terra cottas. M. Seroux d'Agincourt has engraved three of these.^ One represents a naked boy standing with the bulla suspended from his neck. Another exhibits a boy with the bulla in like manner hanging from his neck, but clothed and seated on a chair with a tablet on his knees. The third is still more remarkable, the bulla representing three figures, one of which is Mercury. ^ Mdi]etc,u,nt sujva,p. 45. ^De Dipfi/rJils Vderum. Lips 174:?, Sc/tedula, II. "28 ; and hiquinjinto thestylc ""' Proceed hi f/s nf Arch. Inxtilnfr at Win of ancient 'jid.fs paintin[/.'<,/jj/ C.W. O.rfuWl, Chester, p. xxxix.. Museum Catal. 1847, ;5j). 1.0, "21!, ;5:57. " 7 Rcciitil dc Frai/mcn.f dc Sculpture en tare cuiie, PI. A"/ V. Fif/x. 1, S, .5.
 * See Theophilus Presbyter, Z)i>. Art. pi. h.