Glass amphoriskos (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent light blue, with handles in same color; trails in opaque yellow and opaque turquoise blue. Uneven, inward-sloping rim-disk; slanting cylindrical neck; rounded shoulder; ovoid body; circular base-knob with flat bottom; two vertical ring handles applied to shoulder, drawn up, and pressed onto neck. A yellow trail attached at edge of rim-disk; a thick yellow trail applied in a spiral around shoulder and top of body, then tooled into an uneven close-set zigzag pattern on central part of body, where a turquoise blue trail is added, mingling with the yellow; below, a third, fine yellow trail wound horizontally once around body. Intact; bubbles and gritty white impurities; dulling, pitting, and faint iridescent 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