Glass amphoriskos (perfume bottle)
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Translucent light blue; handles and base-knob in translucent blue green; trails in opaque white and opaque yellow. Inward-sloping rim-disk, with tooling indent underneath; tall, slightly concave, cylindrical neck; sloping shoulder; elongated piriform body; large applied knob-base; two rod handles applied in pads across shoulder, drawn up vertically to just below rim, then looped in and down, and attached to neck below rim over trail decoration. Thick yellow trail applied to top of neck, wound in a spiral down neck and across shoulder to body; a white trail applied over yellow two-thirds down neck, wound round in a spiral to top of body, then tooled into a close-set festoon pattern with thirty-one irregular upward strokes, continuing in a plain spiral around lower part of body, ending under base knob. Body complete, but one of handles broken and repaired, and large chip in base knob; some dulling and pitting, patches of limy enrustation on handles, and creamy brown weathering and iridescence, especially on trails. Two handled vase with fern pattern.
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.