Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent cobalt blue, with handles in same color; trail in opaque white. Inward-sloping rim-disk, with radiating tooling marks on upper surface; cylindrical neck, tapering downwards; small rounded shoulder; straight-sided cylindrical body, tapering upwards; convex bottom; two vertical ring handles with knobbed tails, applied over trail decoration, one higher than the other. A thick white trail applied on neck, wound down across shoulder one and a half times, then tooled into an inverted close-set festoon pattern, with nine downward strokes. Complete, except for chips in rim and one small hole in upper body; a trail probably decorated the edge of the rim-disk but this is now completely missing, leaving a weathered beveled edge; dulling, 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