Glass amphoriskos (perfume bottle)
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Translucent blue, with handles in same color; trails in opaque yellow and opaque turquoise blue. Broad, uneven, slightly inward-sloping rim-disk, with off-center mouth; cylindrical neck, with slight downward taper; almost horizontal shoulder; top-shaped body; circular base-knob with slanting flat bottom; two vertical strap handles applied to shoulder, drawn up, and pressed onto neck and underside of rim-disk. A turquoise blue trail attached at edge of rim-disk; a thick yellow trail applied at base of neck, wound down in a spiral across shoulder and around top of body, then tooled into an uneven close-set zigzag pattern on upper part of body, where a turquoise blue trail is added, mingling with the yellow; below, a second, thicker turquoise blue trail also forms part of the zigzag pattern; a fine yellow trail wound horizontally two and a half times around middle of body; a turquoise blue trail applied carelessly around base-knob. Intact; bubbles and gritty white impurities; some deep pitting and iridescent weathering, and one side covered in brown limy encrustation.
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.