Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent cobalt blue, with handles in same color; trails in opaque yellow and opaque white. Broad horizontal rim-disk, with radiating tooling marks on underside; cylindrical neck, tapering downwards; narrow uneven shoulder; straight-sided cylindrical body, with slight upward taper; uneven convex bottom, with irregular tooling indents; below shoulder, two vertical ring handles, pierced horizontally, applied over trail pattern. A fine yellow trail attached at edge of rim-disk; a fine white trail begun below shoulder, wound spirally down to lower body, tooled into a festoon pattern with well-defined loops, some projecting around shoulder; a second yellow trail added over white near bottom of festoon pattern and continuing below as fine spiral, ending in large flattened blob. Intact; dulling, pitting, and creamy 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