Glass cylindrical bottle with painted decoration

Glass cylindrical bottle with painted decoration

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Colorless with yellow green tinge. Colored enamels, painted on exterior. Fragmentary cylindrical bottle; horizontal shoulder with rounded edge; vertical sides, curving in at bottom. Cold-painted decoration on body, comprising three rectangular, vertical panels; at top, red and yellow horizontal lines above a continuous frieze of yellow strokes overpainted with red dots and dashes; a similar pattern runs vertically down sides between the three main panels, which are also framed with red and yellow lines. The panels depict birds, vegetation, and baskets containing fruit, all painted in red, yellow, light blue, green, white, and black. Reconstructed from many fragments, some of which do not join and with extensive losses; rim, neck, and bottom missing; pinprick bubbles; slight pitting and patches of brownish weathering. The vertical sides of the vessel are divided into three decorative panels. In one scene two ducks sit on lotus pods; in another there is white cock below a basket containing fruit, possibly figs, and a third shows a parrot also below a basket.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Glass cylindrical bottle with painted decorationGlass cylindrical bottle with painted decorationGlass cylindrical bottle with painted decorationGlass cylindrical bottle with painted decorationGlass cylindrical bottle with painted decoration

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.