Glass jug

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent pale blue green; handle in same color but with olive green streaks. Rim folded out, down, over, and in, and pressed flat on top surface; oval mouth; cylindrical neck with tooling marks around base; large piriform body; pushed-in bottom; curving handle with ribs at sides, attached to top of body with downward fins, drawn up and out, turned in horizontally and trailed on to top of neck and rim, with folded thumb rest above. Complete but several internal cracks in rim and body; pinprick and larger bubbles with some white gritty impurities in body, and many black streaky impurities in handle; faint iridescence and weathering, with one patch of brownish weathering on interior. Bluish pear-shaped blown glass vase with curving handle.

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