Glass mosaic perfume bottle

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent pale blue, with opaque white trails and faint translucent purple streaks. Very small everted rim; cylindrical neck, expanding downwards; squat, globular body; uneven, flat bottom. Striped mosaic pattern of applied trails wound round on a blue ground and then tooled in four upward strokes into a festoon pattern around body. Intact, except for slight chipping to rim; pitting of surface bubbles, dulling, iridescence, and thick, layered 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