Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Opaque dark olive green, with handles in same color; trails in opaque yellow and opaque turquoise blue. Broad horizontal rim-disk; short cylindrical neck, tapering downwards; barrow angular shoulder; straight-sided cylindrical body; convex bottom; two vertical ring handles with small tails, applied over trail decoration. Yellow trail attached at edge of rim-disk; a second yellow trail applied on top of body and wound down in a spiral, tooled into a close-set zigzag pattern; halfway down pattern a turquoise blue trail is added, mingling with yellow; immediately below zigzag, a third unmarvered yellow trail wound horizontally twice around body. Intact; dulling, iridescence, and some reddish brown encrustation and 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