Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Translucent cobalt blue, with handles in same color; trails in opaque yellow, opaque white, and opaque turquoise blue. Broad horizontal rim-disk; cylindrical neck, tapering upward; narrow, almost horizontal shoulder; straight-sided cylindrical body, with slight upward taper; convex bottom, with off-center tooling indent and applied small blob of blue glass; below shoulder, two vertical ring handles, unpierced, with trailing tails, one of which is higher up body than the other, applied over trail pattern. A fine yellow trail attached at edge of rim-disk; on body, alternating bands of yellow, white, and turquoise blue, tooled from shoulder to undercurve at bottom into a close-set feather pattern in eight vertical patterns with alternating upward and downward strokes, with some of loops at top extending onto neck and some deep indents in sides. Body intact, but parts of rim-disk missing and restored with fill; slight pitting, but very little iridescence or weathering. In the late fourth century B.C., perfume containers often are far larger than their predecessors and have strikingly elegant decoration in the form of delicate colored threads combed into a zigzag, feather, or festoon 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.