Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent cobalt blue, with handles in same color; trails in opaque white (appearing very pale greyish blue) and opaque yellow. Rim-disk; tall cylindrical neck; sloping shoulder; slightly bulbous cylindrical body; small convex bottom; on body, two large lug handles, applied over trail pattern, both with tooled upward indents. A white trail applied to neck and wound spirally down across body, ending in circle around bottom; another yellow applied to rim-disk and trailed down across neck and upper body over white trail, tooled into a close-set zigzag pattern with shallow vertical ribbing around middle of body, then continuing in uneven horizontal lines and ending with a thick blob spiral around base of body. Broken and repaired; most of rim-disk and part of neck missing, one large crack with losses around body, and one large hole around bottom; dulling, some pitting, and iridescent 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