Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Opaque chocolate brown, with handles in same color; trails in opaque yellow and opaque turquoise blue. Uneven horizontal rim-disk, with radiating tooling marks on upper surface and rough edge to mouth; off-center cylindrical neck, tapering downwards; narrow rounded shoulder; slightly convex sides to cylindrical body, tapering upwards; convex bottom; two large vertical ring handles with knobbed tails, applied over trail decoration; one tail longer than the other. Yellow and turquoise trails attached at top of body, wound down in a close-set spiral as alternating lines, tooled into a close-set zigzag pattern; yellow trail ending as a broad spiral on bottom. Intact; dulling and pitting, and thick creamy weathering with faint iridescence; weathering makes most of trails appear opaque white.

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