Glass jug (oinochoe) with snake-thread decoration

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Colorless with pale blue green tinge; handle in same color; opaque white, opaque blue, and colorless trails. Trefoil rim, with rounded lip; cylindrical neck, expanding downwards; sloping shoulder; piriform body; tubular base ring; flat bottom with pontil scar at center; strap handle applied in a long pad to shoulder, drawn up and outwards in a curve and then turned inwards (and probably dropped on to back of rim). Around top of neck, a fine blue trail wound 2½ times in a spiral; on body, four separate trails, flattened and serrated, alternately white and blue, each making a similar abstract curvilinear pattern, and between them four vertical colorless trails, each in a compact key pattern; on handle, part of a single blue trail with projection at top. Body complete, but broken and repaired handle, with back of rim and top of handle missing; pinprick bubbles and blowing striations, with larger elongated bubbles in handle; pale brownish soil encrustation, whitish weathering, and 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