Glass amphoriskos (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent cobalt blue, with handle and base-knob in same color; trail in uncertain color. Everted horizontal rim with rounded outer lip; cylindrical neck; sloping shoulder; ovoid body, tapering downwards; applied base-knob; strap handle applied in a large pad to shoulder, drawn up and slightly outward, then curving in and pressed on to neck under rim. Trail applied on neck below rim and wound down in spiral, drawn across shoulder, and then tooled into a close-set zigzag pattern around upper half of body, formed by uneven vertical tooling indents, and with an irregular raised line running aslant across shoulder. Broken and repaired, with several holes in body and second handle completely missing; dulling, pitting, and iridescence, with large areas of thick, milky 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