Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent blue, with handles in same color; trails in opaque white and opaque yellow. Rim-disk, uneven with slight inward taper; short, funnel-shaped cylindrical neck; tall, straight-sided fusiform body expanding downward, then tapering in to pointed bottom; two horizontal lug handles applied over trail at top of body. White trail attached near bottom, drawn up in a spiral to point of carination; yellow trail attached at carination wound slightly over once round in an upward spiral; both trails then drawn up body, tooled into a festoon pattern with fourteen upward strokes, and wound round again in spiral; yellow ending in a backward loop on top of body, and white ending on lip of rim. Intact; some dulling, severe pitting, and brilliant 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.

Metropolitan Museum of Art