Glass amphoriskos with band of scrolls

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent pale streaky purple, with handles in translucent pale blue green. Rim folded out, down, round, and in, and pressed into sides of mouth; cylindrical neck; ovoid body; low cylindrical base, with concave, oval bottom; rod handles attached in large claw pads to shoulder, drawn up, round, and in, and folded onto neck. One continuous mold seam around body and across bottom, but edges of molds not carefully aligned. On body, frieze of twenty-six downturned contiguous flutes in raised outline on upper body and thirty upturned flutes on lower body, joined by a central band of tendril scrolls bordered above and below by a single horizontal raised line. Intact, except for small weathered chip in one handle; bubbles in rim; dulling and slight encrustation on exterior, patches of brownish weathering and brilliant iridescence on interior.

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