Glass amphoriskos (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent green, appearing black; one handle and base-knob in yellow brown, the other handle in yellow green; trail in opaque white. Inward-sloping rim-disk, with tooling indent underneath; tall, slightly concave, cylindrical neck; sloping shoulder; elongated piriform body; large applied base-knob; two rod handles applied in pads across shoulder, drawn up and slightly out to above rim, then looped in and down, and attached to neck below rim in a double fold over trail decoration. Single white trail applied around lip of rim and then wound in a spiral around neck and shoulder to body, then tooled into a festoon pattern with twenty-eight upward strokes, continuing in a plain spiral around lower part of body, ending under base-knob. Intact, except for part of knob; areas of deep pitting and dulling, with brilliant iridescence and creamy brown 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