Glass amphoriskos (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent cobalt blue, with handles and base-knob in same color; trails in opaque pale turquoise blue. Broad inward-sloping rim-disk; cylindrical neck; sloping shoulder; ovoid body, tapering downwards; applied circular base-knob with rounded edge and tooling indent on flat bottom; two strap handles applied to top of shoulder and drawn up, forming oval rings, with trail extending across shoulder from bottom of one handle. One trail attached at edge of rim-disk; another applied to top of body in a large pad and wound horizontally and then tooled into a close-set zigzag pattern around middle of body, formed by uneven and shallow vertical tooling indents; below this, a third narrow trail wound horizontally around lower part of body. Broken and repaired, with one hole in side and chip in rim-disk; slight dulling and pitting.

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