Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent light blue, with handles in same color; trails in opaque yellow and opaque white. Broad horizontal rim-disk, with radiating tooling marks on upper surface; short cylindrical neck; rounded shoulder; straight-sided cylindrical body with upward taper; convex bottom; two vertical ring handles with knobbed tails, applied over trail decoration. Yellow trail attached at edge of rim-disk; a white trail overlaid with yellow wound unevenly around neck and top of body, the yellow trail continuing in a spiral on body; another white trail applied to top of body and wound as a spiral around upper body, forming alternating lines of color with the yellow trail, then both tooled into an uneven, close-set zigzag pattern from middle of body to above bottom, where the trails are again wound horizontally before ending around bottom. Complete, except for two-thirds of rim-disk and kobbed tail of one handle; dulling, pitting, and faint 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