Speaking of art, the Carnegie Museum of Art has added a new collection search to its site. With it, I was able to find pictures of two of the Roman glass cups I’ve admired every time I walked past. One of them comes from the first century A.D.: it’s a solid deep red color. The other, from the previous century, is cast in beautiful swirling patterns of green, yellow, blue, and red. If the cup Jesus used at the Last Supper was glass, it might well have looked like either one of these.

This collection search is a lot of fun. Just type in the name of any artist–especially from the nineteenth century on, where the collection is strongest–and see what comes up. Try Burne-Jones, for example, and you’ll find a fascinating allegorical Nativity that puts the Holy Grail right at the birth of Christ.

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