Glass aryballos (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent cobalt blue, with handles in opaque yellow; trails in opaque yellow and opaque turquoise blue. Broad inward-sloping rim-disk; short cylindrical neck; right-angled shoulder; almost spherical body; convex, somewhat pointed bottom; two vertical ring handles with knobbed tails, applied over trail decoration, extend from shoulder to underside of rim-disk. Turquoise blue trail applied to outer edge of rim-disk; a yellow trail, unmarvered, applied on upper body and wound spirally, at first in horizontal lines, then tooled into a close-set zigzag pattern around central section of body, formed by shallow vertical tooling indents; three thick turquoise blue trails applied over yellow, forming a bold, even design; below this, a yellow trail and a turquoise blue trail wound horizontally once around body. Intact; white gritty impurities in body; slight dulling and pitting, and small patches of brown encrustation.

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