Glass amphoriskos (perfume bottle)
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Opaque white, with handles in same color; trails in translucent purple. Broad, inward-sloping rim-disk with radiating tool marks on upper surface and projecting uneven lip to mouth; cylindrical neck tapering upward; broad, sloping shoulder; elongated ovoid body tapering to a point; two vertical strap handles applied over trails, drawn up from top of shoulder, turned in, and pressed on to underside of rim-disk and top of neck. One trail attached at edge of rim-disk; another trail wound round in a spiral on shoulder; a third applied as a thick band around shoulder, at first wound round top of body in horizontal lines, then tooled into a zigzag pattern; finally a fourth, thinner trail applied to body, also tooled into a zigzag pattern and ending in an uneven spiral around bottom; long vertical tooling indents in alternating upward and downward strokes, forming prominent rounded ribs around body. Complete, except for knob-base; dulling, pitting, faint iridescence, and small patches of enrustation. These glass vessels with opaque white bodies and purple threads have been found throughout the Greek world, but most examples are from cemeteries and sanctuaries in the eastern Mediterranean.
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.