Glass aryballos (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent cobalt blue, with same color handles; trails in opaque yellow and opaque turquoise blue. Broad inward-sloping rim-disk with uneven upper surface; short concave neck; uneven angular shoulder; almost spherical body; convex pointed bottom; two large ring handles with knobbed tails, applied over trail decoration, extend from shoulder to neck and underside of rim-disk. A yellow trail applied to outer edge of rim-disk; another yellow trail applied to outer edge of shoulder and wound down in spiral, at first in horizontal lines, then tooled into an irregular close-set zigzag pattern around central section of body, formed by uneven, shallow vertical tooling indents; a second trail in turquoise blue added to zigzag, mingling with the yellow trail; below, a yellow trail wound horizontally twice round body; a short unmarvered yellow trail applied to bottom. Intact, but some small internal cracks in side of body; dulling, 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