Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Translucent cobalt blue, with handles in same color; trails in opaque yellow and opaque white. Uneven rim-disk, with tooling indents in upper surface; cylindrical neck; narrow rounded shoulder; elongated oval body with marked upward taper; convex, slightly pointed bottom; below shoulder, two vertical ring handles with knobbed tails applied over trail decoration; one with a longer tail than the other. A yellow trail attached unevenly at edge of rim-disk; a white trail applied as a thick blob at top of body and wound down in spiral ten times and overlaid with a yellow trail, then tooled into a close-set zigzag pattern around the central part of body, flanked at top and bottom by overlaid thicker yellow trails; below this, the white trail continuesfive and a half times horizontally around lower body, again overlaid with a yellow trail; one large round blue blob protrudes from side of bottom. Complete, except for part of trail around rim-dis and some surface cracks around bottom; dulling and pitting, and most of body covered with thin creamy 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.