Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent deep cobalt blue, with handles in same color; trail in opaque yellow. Broad, uneven, almost horizontal rim-disk, with rounded edge and wide mouth; cylindrical neck, flaring upwards; small, sloping shoulder; cylindrical body, with slightly convex sides; rounded bottom with central prokecting knob; two horizontal lug handles applied over trail at top of body. Yellow trail attached to rim-disk and wound round edge and down neck in a spiral, tooled into a feather pattern on body in six panels of alternating upward and downward strokes with slightly raised loops around shoulder, ending around bottom. Broken and repaired with some chips and small holes in body; slight dulling and pitting, with 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