Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent blue, with handles in opaque yellow; trails in opaque yellow. Broad flat rim-disk with rough edge to mouth; very short concave cylindrical neck; narrow uneven shoulder; straight-sided body with upward taper; convex bottom, slightly flattened to one side; below shoulder, two vertical ring handles with knobbed tails applied over trail decoration; one slightly higher than the other. One trail attached at edge of rim-disk; another applied at top of body and wound down in spiral six times, then tooled into a close-set zigzag pattern around the central part of body, formed by shallow vertical tooling indents; below this, trail wound twice horizontally around lower body. Intact, except for knob on tail of one handle; slight dulling and pitting, and most of body, especially the trails, covered with creamy 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