Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent light blue with greenish tinge, with handles in same color; trails in opaque yellow and opaque turquoise blue. Broad flat rim-disk, with radiating tooling marks on upper surface; short cylindrical neck, tapering downwards; narrow uneven shoulder; straight-sided body with upward taper; convex bottom; below shoulder, two vertical ring handles with long knobbed tails applied over trail decoration. One yellow trail attached at edge of rim-disk; another applied at top of body and wound down in spiral seven times, then tooled into a close-set zigzag pattern around the central part of body; a turquoise blue trail added to zigzag, mingling with yellow trail, midway down body; below this, a third yellow trail wound three times horizontally around lower body. Complete, except for gash on one side of body; dulling, faint iridescence, and creamy iridescent weathering, mainly on trails.

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