Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent dark purple, appearing black, with handles in same color; trails in opaque white and opaque turquoise blue. Broad slightly uneven horizontal rim-disk; cylindrical neck with downward taper; rounded shoulder; straight-sided cylindrical body with upward taper and curving in at bottom; two vertical ring handles with tails, applied over trail decoration. Turquoise blue trail attached at edge of rim-disk; a white trail applied to bottom of neck, wound in a spiral around top of body, then tooled into an irregular, close-set zigzag pattern, with slight vertical ribbing around sides. Broken and repaired, with most of bottom and part of lower body missing, several holes and chips in lower body, and knobs at bottom of handle tails also missing; dulling, pitting, and iridescent 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