Glass flask

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Colorless. Uneven, rounded rim with beveled outer lip; flaring mouth; short, cylindrical neck, slightly tooled in around base; elongated piriform body; small, concave bottom. Wheel-abraded decoration on body in horizontal bands; two broad bands of lines around upper part of body; two thinner bands just below point of greatest diameter. Decoration is now hard to trace because of surface weathering. Intact; some large and elongated bubbles; dulling, pitting, and iridescent weathering.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than thirty thousand works ranging in date from the Neolithic period (ca. 4500 B.C.) to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312. It includes the art of many cultures and is among the most comprehensive in North America. The geographic regions represented are Greece and Italy, but not as delimited by modern political frontiers: Greek colonies were established around the Mediterranean basin and on the shores of the Black Sea, and Cyprus became increasingly Hellenized. For Roman art, the geographical limits coincide with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The department also exhibits the art of prehistoric Greece (Helladic, Cycladic, and Minoan) and pre-Roman art of Italic peoples, notably the Etruscans.

Metropolitan Museum of Art