Glass bottle with snake-thread decoration

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Colorless; trails in opaque white and opaque blue. Everted rim, folded over and in, and smoothed into side of flaring mouth; cylindrical neck, expanding downwards; squat, globular body; applied, partially tubular base ring; flat bottom with pontil scar at center. Around top of neck, a fine blue trail wound in an overlapping spiral; on body, four separate trails, alternately white and blue, each making the same abstract curvilinear design, flattened and serrated at top. Broken and repaired, with some losses to lower neck and to trail around neck; pinprick bubbles; dulling, some gritty encrustation on bottom inside base ring, and weathering and encrustation on interior. Vase with blue and white serpentine applied thread bands.

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