Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Opaque red brown, streaked with sealing wax red, with handles in same color; trails in opaque yellow and opaque turquoise blue. Broad horizontal rim-disk; cylindrical neck, tapering downwards; narrow rounded shoulder; straight-sided cylindrical body, tapering upwards; uneven convex bottom; two large vertical ring handles with knobbed tails, applied over trail decoration; one higher than the other. A yellow trail attached at edge of rim-disk; a turquoise blue trail applied to neck, wound in a close-set spiral down body; another yellow trail applied over the turquoise blue in an uneven band around lower body and bottom. Intact, except for part of one ring handle and one circular hole in bottom; dulling and pitting, and faint iridescence.

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