Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Opaque white, with handles in same color; trails in translucent purple. Broad, flat rim-disk with tooling marks on upper surface; short cylindrical neck; narrow rounded shoulder; straight-sided body with slight upward taper; convex bottom; below shoulder, two vertical ring handles with knobbed tails applied over trail decoration. One trail attached at edge of rim-disk; another applied on neck and wound down in spiral on upper body, then tooled into a zigzag pattern around middle of body; below this, a third fine trail wound twice horizontally around body. Intact, but internal cracks around lower body; pitting of surface bubbles, patches of limy encrustation, and faint 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