Glass oinochoe (perfume jug)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Opaque dark purple, with handle and foot in same color; trails in opaque yellow and opaque turquoise blue. Applied broad trefoil rim-disk, with tooling indents at sides; cylindrical neck; broad angular shoulder; large ovoid body; applied irregular outsplayed foot with pushed-in bottom; handle attached to shoulder in a pad, drawn up and out, and turned in, forming an arch slightly above rim-disk, then dropped down and pressed on to back of neck below rim. Yellow and turquoise trails, mixed together, attached at edge of rim-disk; a second yellow trail applied under handle, wound horizontally two and a half times around top of body, then tooled into a close-set zigzag pattern, intermingling with a turquoise blue trail; below zigzag, a fine yellow trail wound horizontally three times around body; a yellow trail wound around edge of foot. Intact, but some of trails deeply weathered, leaving hollows in body; white gritty inclusions; dulling and pitting, but only faint iridescence.

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