Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent light blue with greenish tinge; opaque white trails; handles of indeterminate color (blue?). Uneven, coiled rim-disk with rounded outer lip; fusiform body, with uneven, misshapen sides, expanding downward, then tapering in to pointed bottom; two uneven lug handles applied at top of body over trail with horizontal tooling indents above and below. Trail applied unevenly around rim and trailed off below; another trail attached near bottom, drawn up in a spiral to point of carination, tooled into an irregular feather pattern around side with six upward and five downward strokes, and wound round again in spiral ending below rim. Intact; many bubbles; dulling, pitting, and faint iridescence.

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