Glass amphora (two-handled bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Colorless with pale green tinge; handles and trails in same color. Rounded rim, folded out, over, and in; flaring mouth; cylindrical neck, expanding downwards; sloping shoulder; piriform body, tapering downwards; integral, tubular base ring; pushed-in bottom with off-center pontil scar; handles applied in a tooled pad to shoulder, drawn up vertically, turned in and down at an acute angle, and trailed onto neck. Trails applied to body in six pairs of wavy vertical lines and one extra single line, forming irregular X-shaped patterns; fire-rounded but in relief on both exterior and interior. Badly broken and cracked around neck and upper body, with one large hole; few pinprick bubbles; dulling, slight pitting, and iridescent weathering, with small patches of limy encrustation on interior.

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