Glass lentoid aryballos (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Semi-opaque dark blue, with handles, coils, and feet in same color; trails in opaque yellow. Broad sloping horizontal shoulder; flattened globular body, with convex sides; shallow convex bottom; two rolled cylindrical feet on either side of bottom; two vertical ring handles attached to shoulder; two coils running down sides between handles and feet. An unmarvered fine yellow trail attached at the edge of rim-disk; another similar yellow trail wound spirally round neck; on body, a third trail applied to outer edge of shoulder and tooled into a feather pattern with alternating upward and downward strokes, forming vertical ridges in sides; coils decorated with a spiraling yellow trail. Broken and partially restored from fragments, about half of body preserved with several unattached fragments of rim, neck, and body; heavily pitted with white iridescent weathering covering all surfaces and broken edges.

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