Glass amphoriskos (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent deep turquoise blue, with opaque yellow handles, base knob, and trails. Short, outsplayed rim disk, forming funnel-shpaed mouth; cylindrical neck; piriform body; applied, solid knob base, slightly concave on bottom; two small ear-shaped ring handles applied to top of body and neck. Thick, unmarvered trail applied to outer lip of rim; two trails wound horizontally around center of body, forming three uneven lines. Intact; some pinprick bubbles; dulling and patches of iridescent brownish weathering. During the fifth century B.C., the colors of Mediterranean Group I vessels expanded from blue or opaque white to include other colors, such as dark green, golden brown, and opaque brick red. This amphoriskos is also unusual in that the handles match the trail decoration, not the color of the vessel itself.

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