Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Semi-opaque dark blue, with handles in same color; trails in opaque white and opaque yellow. Slightly inward-sloping, broad, coiled rim-disk; short cylindrical neck; uneven shoulder; elongated oval body with upward taper; convex bottom; below shoulder, two vertical ring handles with knobbed tails, applied over trails, one slightly higher than the other. A white trail attached at edge of rim-disk; another applied as a thick line over shoulder and wound down in tight spiral on upper part of body; below this four bands of trails tooled into a zigzag pattern, comprising a broader trail in yellow wound horizontally slightly more than once, followed by a thin white trail wound round four times, then another thicker yellow trail wound once round body, and another thin white trail wound seven times; a fifth white trail applied on lower down body and wound round eight times in almost horizontal lines and a thicker yellow trail applied over the top of the white trail in an undulating single line. Intact; pitting of pinprick bubbles, one patch of dulling and weathering down body, and faint iridescence and encrustation on handles.
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.