# The Portland Vase > Unrecorded Roman glassworker and gem-cutter - c. AD 5-25, disputed. Low dates in the range c. 30-20 BC retain scholarly support, and the vase is often placed generally in the reign of Augustus, 27 BC to AD 14. > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/roman-cameo-glass-workshop/the-portland-vase/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-29 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Unrecorded Roman glassworker and gem-cutter - **Date:** c. AD 5-25, disputed. Low dates in the range c. 30-20 BC retain scholarly support, and the vase is often placed generally in the reign of Augustus, 27 BC to AD 14. - **Medium:** Cameo glass: cobalt-blue glass with an opaque white glass overlay, the white cut back in relief - **Dimensions:** Height 24.5 cm; maximum diameter 17.7 cm; mouth diameter 9.3 cm - **Object type:** Glass - **Period:** Early Imperial (Julio-Claudian), 27 BC-68 - **Current location:** British Museum, London - **Attribution:** unknown ## Summary A Roman cameo glass vessel of about AD 5 to 25, cobalt blue under an opaque white overlay cut back in relief, 24.5 centimetres high. It is the most celebrated surviving object in a material of which perhaps fifteen more or less complete pieces exist anywhere in the world. Nobody knows who made it, where it was found, when exactly it was made, or what the seven figures on it are doing.It reached the modern world already incomplete, its pointed base gone and a cameo disc cut from somebody else's Roman relief fitted underneath in its place. On 7 February 1845 a drunk visitor to the British Museum threw a piece of Persepolis sculpture through its case and reduced it to a heap of fragments; he could be prosecuted only for the case, because the statute on wilful damage reached objects worth up to five pounds and no further. It has been reassembled three times since, in 1845, in 1948 to 1949 and in 1988 to 1989, and each attempt left pieces out.Its fame is not Roman. It is Staffordshire. Josiah Wedgwood borrowed it in 1786, spent years failing to copy it in jasperware, and succeeded in 1790. The copies went everywhere. That is why almost every photograph captioned Portland Vase online shows a piece of English pottery rather than the Roman glass in Bloomsbury. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **c. AD 5-25** Made, probably at Rome `[disputed]` (origin) No maker, workshop or patron is recorded. The date is the British Museum's and is contested; low dates to about 30-20 BC have scholarly support. Place of manufacture is inferred from the concentration of comparable cameo glass in Italy, not documented. - **1582** Reportedly recovered from a sarcophagus in the Monte del Grano, via Tusculana, outside Rome `[disputed]` (discovery) Transmitted by Pietro Santi Bartoli. Accepted without question until Henry Stuart Jones rejected it in 1909. Reinstated as authentic by Filippo Coarelli in the Journal of Roman Archaeology in December 2025, who identifies the monument as the tomb of Alexander Severus. Both positions are current. Note that a third-century tomb would not date a first-century vessel. - **1582-c. 1601** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) No owner is recorded between the reported discovery and the vase's appearance in Roman collecting records. - **c. 1601-1626** Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte, Rome `[documented]` (collection) First secure record of the object. Del Monte is best known as Caravaggio's early patron. - **1626-1780** The Barberini family, Rome (acquired by Cardinal Francesco Barberini) `[documented]` (purchase) Bought for 500 scudi. Held for about 150 years, during which the object was known as the Barberini Vase, the name it carries in all eighteenth-century sources. - **1780-1782** James Byres, Scottish antiquarian and dealer, Rome `[documented]` (purchase) Acquired from the Barberini. The reported mechanism is the settlement of the gambling debts of Donna Cordelia Barberini-Colonna. - **1782-1784** Sir William Hamilton, British plenipotentiary at Naples `[documented]` (purchase) Bought from Byres for 1,000 pounds late in 1782 according to Milo Keynes. Other accounts place Hamilton's acquisition in 1778 or 1783; the British Museum record gives 1778. The conflict is unresolved in the sources consulted. - **1784-1785** Margaret Cavendish Bentinck, Dowager Duchess of Portland `[documented]` (purchase) Bought privately from Hamilton for 1,800 guineas after what Keynes describes as a secret and delicate negotiation. Held for about a year; the Duchess died in July 1785. The object takes its modern name from this ownership. - **1786-1810** William Henry Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland, then the 4th Duke `[documented]` (auction purchase) Bought back into the family at the Portland Museum sale on 7 June 1786, lot 4155, for 980 guineas (1,029 pounds), by a Mr Tomlinson bidding for the 3rd Duke. On 10 June 1786 the Duke and Josiah Wedgwood signed an agreement lending the vase to Etruria to be copied. - **1810-1945** The Dukes of Portland, on deposit at the British Museum `[documented]` (loan) Deposited by the 4th Duke in 1810; secondary accounts attribute the decision to a guest breaking the base. Ownership remained with the family throughout. Withdrawn between 1929 and 1932 by the 6th Duke and offered at Christie's, where it failed to reach its reserve, then returned to the museum. Broken and twice restored during this period, all while the museum was custodian and not owner. - **1945-present** British Museum, London `[documented]` (acquisition) Purchased from William Cavendish-Bentinck, 7th Duke of Portland, with the aid of a bequest from James Rose Vallentin. Registered 1945,0927.1 (also cited as GR 1945.9-27.1 and Gems 4036). The purchase price is not published in the sources consulted. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **1786-06-07** Mr Skinner and Co, - Estimate: Not published in the sources consulted. - Hammer: 980 guineas (1,029 pounds) - With premium: None. A buyer's premium was not a feature of English auction practice in 1786; the hammer price is the whole price. - Lot 4155 in the sale of the Portland Museum, the collection of the late Duchess Dowager of Portland, held at her house in Privy Garden, Whitehall, over thirty-eight days from 24 April to 7 June 1786 by order of the acting executrix. The vase was on the final day. Bought by a Mr Tomlinson acting for the 3rd Duke of Portland, the Duchess's son. Note that this is less than the 1,800 guineas the Duchess herself had paid Hamilton two years earlier: the vase lost money at its only completed auction. - **1929 to 1932** Christie's, London, - Estimate: Not published in the sources consulted. - Hammer: Unsold. Failed to reach its reserve. - With premium: Not applicable. - Offered by William Cavendish-Bentinck, 6th Duke of Portland, who withdrew the vase from its long deposit at the British Museum in order to sell it. It did not sell and went back to Bloomsbury, where the museum bought it outright thirteen years later. Neither the reserve nor the highest bid appears in the sources consulted, and this is the only occasion on which the object was tested on the open market. ## Open questions - When was it made? The British Museum gives about AD 5 to 25, but low dates in the range of about 30 to 20 BC retain scholarly support and no independent dating evidence exists for the vessel itself. - What does the frieze show? Readings divide between Greek myth (Peleus and Thetis, Dionysos and Ariadne) and Roman dynastic politics (Augustus, Antony, Cleopatra, Octavia), and there is no agreement on whether the two sides are one story or two. Filippo Coarelli's 2025 reading of Peleus and Thetis with the afterlife of Achilles is the newest, not the last. - Where was it found? The Monte del Grano account of 1582 was rejected by Henry Stuart Jones in 1909 and reinstated by Coarelli in 2025. The two positions are both live in the current literature. - Was it blown and cut, or moulded? The dip-overlay account is standard and supported by Gudenrath and Whitehouse's recreation; Lierke's moulding theory and Whiteley's 2017 CT evidence run against it, but Whiteley scanned a different fragment, not the vase. - When did the pointed base come off, and when was the disc fitted? Both are undated. The disc may have been added in antiquity or long after; the sources give no decisive evidence. - How many fragments were there in 1845? Accounts give well over eighty, 189, and about two hundred. The figure has never been reconciled in the sources consulted. - What was the reserve, and the highest bid, at the Christie's offering of 1929 to 1932? This is the only time the open market was asked to price the vase and the figures are not in the sources consulted. - What did the British Museum pay the 7th Duke of Portland in 1945? The purchase price is not published in the sources consulted. - What happened to the vase between the reported discovery in 1582 and its appearance in Cardinal Del Monte's collection by about 1601? No owner is recorded for that interval. ## Sources - [1] British Museum object record for the Portland Vase, registration 1945,0927.1, giving dimensions, technique, description and provenance summary. Consulted through the museum's Google Arts and Culture partner page; britishmuseum.org/collection/object/G_1945-0927-1 returned HTTP 403 to automated retrieval on 2 August 2026 and should be checked by hand. - [2] Milo Keynes, 'The Portland Vase: Sir William Hamilton, Josiah Wedgwood and the Darwins', Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 52, no. 2 (July 1998), 237-259. The scholarly source for the Del Monte and Barberini ownership, the Byres and Hamilton transactions, the 1786 sale and the Wedgwood loan. - [3] Filippo Coarelli, 'The Mausoleum of Alexander Severus and the Portland Vase', Journal of Roman Archaeology 38, no. 2 (December 2025), 409-434, doi 10.1017/S104775942510055X. Abstract and full citation consulted; the full text was not obtained. - [4] 'Portland stoned: An Irishman's Diary about the Dubliner who broke one of the world's most famous vases', The Irish Times. The fullest account of Mulcahy, the alias, the charge, the five pound ceiling and the anonymous benefactor. - [5] 'A restoration 144 years in the making: how the Portland Vase was restored to its Roman glory', Sylcreate. A trade account by an adhesives manufacturer, used only for the conservation materials and chronology. Flagged for replacement with Nigel Williams, The Breaking and Remaking of the Portland Vase (British Museum Press, 1989). - [6] Victoria and Albert Museum, 'Josiah Wedgwood's Portland Vase'. Holding institution account of the jasperware copies, the manufacturing process and the V&A first edition, museum number WE.8000-2014. - [7] Wikipedia, 'Portland Vase'. Tertiary. Used as the consolidating source for the frieze interpretations, the 1948-49 restoration detail, the box of thirty-seven fragments, the base disc, the Wedgwood exhibition ticketing and the 1929-32 Christie's offering. Flagged for replacement with Journal of Glass Studies 32 (1990), the Corning volume devoted to the vase, and with Williams 1989. - [8] Wikipedia, 'Cameo glass'. Tertiary. Used for the size of the surviving Roman corpus, the production windows, the casing and flashing methods and the named Pompeian comparanda. Flagged for replacement with a specialist glass catalogue. - [9] Mark Cartwright, 'The Portland Vase', World History Encyclopedia. Tertiary. Used for the figure-by-figure description, the lost pointed base and the unevenly cut mouth. - [10] 'New challenge to centuries-old theories on Roman glass', ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, reporting Associate Professor Richard Whiteley's CT scanning of a Roman cameo glass fragment and his pate de verre hypothesis, presented at the British Museum in October 2017. - [11] Encyclopaedia Britannica, 'John Northwood'. Tertiary. Used for the 1876 glass copy, the Pargeter commission and Benjamin Richardson's 1,000 pound offer. - [12] Cleveland Museum of Art, Portland Vase, Josiah Wedgwood and Sons, about 1790, jasperware with applied decoration, 26.4 x 17.8 cm, accession 1918.823, gift of Mrs L. E. Holden. - [13] Wikimedia Commons file record, 'Portland Vase - 1845 basal disc.jpg', reproducing the British Museum image of the disc Doubleday fitted in 1845 and transcribing its inscription. The record also notes the museum had catalogued the image under the Auldjo Jug. - [14] Wikimedia Commons file record for the Portland Vase disc photographed by Carole Raddato, carrying the British Museum gallery text explaining why the disc does not belong with the vase. - [15] Sir John Soane's Museum, catalogue record for 'A catalogue of the Portland Museum, lately the property of the Duchess Dowager of Portland, deceased: which will be sold by auction, by Mr. Skinner and Co. on Monday the 24th of April, 1786, and the thirty-seven following days ... at her dwelling-house, in Privy-Garden, Whitehall; by order of the acting executrix'. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. 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